Is SharePoint right technology for our project?

We are currently building a new public (extranet) client document portal. This should be system very similar to box.com where we can exchange documents with our clients. We will also allow the client to share documents with other users. Since we are relatively new to the SharePoint technology, we hired a vendor who persuaded us to use SharePoint technology for this product, and we’ve invested significant amount of money so far.

System will have a SharePoint site for each client, around 12000 sites. Each site will have 3 document libraries. We will also create site for shared document users">users and a library in each of these shared user’s sites. In order to avoid item level security, we will have to either add all these users">users to each of the libraries in their respective client sites, or create site custom groups (we can’t use custom groups since Microsoft recommends only 10000 per site collection). Moreover, we will definitely have to use item level security for one of the libraries in which client users">users can upload documents and they are allowed to see only their uploaded documents.

Considering that our system will be used only to exchange documents in the first phase, and possible collaboration features for the next phase (we haven’t defined collaboration yet), do we really need:

•12000+ sites,

•36000+ libraries,

•complicated security model (more secure though),

•extra reading/writing document to database (we are using BLOBs technology) but there is a lot of database reading/writing when you upload/download document

•limitation of 250K sites per site collections

•increased difficulty of creating web parts, event receivers, workflows, timer jobs, web templates, features and other custom code

•more difficult way of updating UI (page layouts, web part zones, publishing templates)

If we were going to do this in SP.NET we could have done it using few web forms, single database and file system for document storage.

Is SharePoint right technology for this system? Can you please give me some Pros and Cons?

Thanks,

As a seasoned ASP.Net developer, I can tell you for certain that you could not have done this with a few web forms in ASP.Net. You would have had to build numerous subsystems for all of the various parts (security, document management, membership, retention, etc). You would also need the obligatory management UIs for all of those subsystems. In addition, since this would effectively be a public facing site, you would also need to spend a great deal of time strengthening your app from hacking attempts. Then there's usability, which would require the involvement of a design group to help you work through those issues. I could go on but you get the picture. SharePoint already has these subsystems and has been hardened against attacks over several releases.

It sounds like you are coming from an ASP.Net background so I won't sugar coat this: SharePoint has a STEEP learning curve that is realistically measured in years and you will make mistakes. Visual Studio 2010 does make it a lot easier to get productive quicker but there will still be places where you will stumble. However, once you get used to the concepts and the environment though, the amount of time spent working up master pages, layouts, web parts, etc., is only slightly more than you spend in ASP.Net.

What you describe really is what SharePoint is made for, though I would question the structuring of 12000 sites in a single site collection. If there is no need for the sites to communicate between each other then they could just as easily be separate site collections or even multiple site collections created along geographic or business boundaries. Not only does this allow for easier management of security, but it also allows you to split your sites across multiple content databases - something you would need to think about down the road from a management/backup perspective.

One last note: the ability to limit that a user can only see their own items is a setting on the list in Sharepoint, there is no need to use item-level permissions for this.