The next Sharepoint topic I would like to cover is Shared Service Providers.
A Shared Service Provider (SSP) is responsible for handling:
- Profiles
- My Sites
- Business Data Catalogue (BDC)
- Excel Services
- Office Sharepoint Search
The idea is that the SSP handles all the above information in one place and your web applications can share the SSP. A web application can be associated to one SSP.
Planning SSP's is fairly easy, if you follow the Planning SSP's article you will notice the following:
A single SSP should be used if: There is no explicit reason to use multiple SSPs.
Your default thinking should be to use one SSP, unless you fit into the scenario's outlined in the planning article.