SharePoint sites and farms become challenging to administer as they grow. Axceler’s ControlPoint helps. It was launched in January 2008, and the main features are:

• User and permission management.
• Site management (setting quotas, ensuring consistent appearance, etc.).
• Reporting across many sites on permissions and usage (including activity, storage, and content).
• Identifying problem sites.
• Performing actions across many sites.

So it lets you do things like:

• Analyze and enforce permissions.
• Clean up user accounts.
• Isolate sites that are no longer needed and delete them.
• Determine who is accessing which documents.
• Find sites with the most or least activity.
• Find sites with the most or least storage.
• Anticipate growth by monitoring sites or storage.
• Monitor activity trends.

Pricing is $5,000 to $10,000 for server software, plus a per-user charge typically in the $0.50 to $1 range; plus maintenance.

SharePoint has had tremendous success. A series of third-party vendors, such as Axceler, are spotting opportunities to add value. Expect SharePoint to end up with a rich third-party vendor community, in much the same way as Exchange and Notes/Domino have.

… David Ferris