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The Learning Curve

SharePoint 2010 deployment is an inherently difficult process, involving many tools and skills. SharePoint Administrators are called upon, not only to understand SharePoint's features (e.g. how Search works or the Web Part Framework), but also to master the design, configuration and tuning of the platform. In order to configure SharePoint 2010 in accordance with best practices, a SharePoint Administrator must know everything from SQL Database Administration to PowerShell.

At a minimum, you'll need to have a firm understanding of how the following tools work and the pros & cons of each:
  • The SharePoint Configuration Wizard
  • The Farm Configuration Wizard
  • SharePoint Central Admin
  • PowerShell
  • STSADM/PSConfig
  • The SharePoint Object Model
The learning curve for using technologies such as PowerShell to configure SharePoint is significant. It's not simply a matter of learning a new language, which might be difficult enough if you're not a programmer by trade. It also requires a firm grasp of the SharePoint Service Architecture, Service Dependencies, Service order of execution, and the SharePoint Object Model.

Deployment with SharePoint Maestro

SharePoint Maestro masks this complexity and lets you focus on the core job of developing and maintaining your enterprise portal. The deployment process automatically ensures that best practices for SharePoint, which are not part of the default configuration, get applied as per your designs. Maestro facilitates access to configuration settings in SharePoint that are not available through SharePoint Central Administration and avoids the need for SharePoint Administrators to learn how to manipulate these settings programmatically. The result is a repeatable, SharePoint deployment that exactly reflects the blueprint created in the design canvas and adheres to SharePoint best practices, all without tedious manual configuration or the development of complex deployment scripts.