It could be any meeting room, anywhere, with one major difference: The room, within Sheraton on the Park hotel in Sydney, is a gateway to the world. At the push of a button, we are chatting to colleagues in Toronto, Canada, speaking to each other as if we were seated across the table. We see the nuances of facial expressions, hand gestures and presentations, full-size, clear and uninterrupted.

Developing a business case for any IT investment is a complicated exercise. But building a business case for SharePoint poses specific challenges because much of its ROI is intangible: SharePoint deployments can lead to process improvements, but it's not always easy to quantify the dollar value of those process improvements.

You must be able to demonstrate how the progress and status of a project is going to be tracked, and how the value is going to be protected -- and then delivered.