Like many world-changing technologies before it, SharePoint has caught IS organizations off-guard. Early adopters within the business established SharePoint environments on their own. These users assumed they could manage these environments independently without IS's knowledge or perhaps with tacit consent. SharePoint environments began proliferating throughout many organizations. Quickly, these environments needed maintenance at a level these business users couldn't handle, and that's when things got interesting.

SharePoint has grown to become a core information platform for many organizations. At this point, IS organizations find that they have no option but to secure, maintain, and support the platform, due to the business-critical data, applications, and intellectual property that's hosted on these ad hoc SharePoint environments. Fortunately, there's help to get your arms around the problem, with four simple high-level strategies for bringing your SharePoint environment under control.