SharePoint 2010: Finally, A Hostable Version!
Posted on Fri, Apr 09, 2010 @ 06:57 PM
SharePoint has been an incredibly successful product for Microsoft in the past few years. What tends to confuse our customers is the fact that the current product ships in two versions: Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) 3.0, and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007.
WSS can be shared in a "multi-tenant" environment, and hosting companies are thus able to provide significant economies of scale and a very attractive price point for small and mid-sized businesses.
However, while WSS is a strong product, its capabilities are significantly less than those of MOSS - in areas like programmability, search, workflows and so on. Meanwhile, MOSS 2007 cannot operate in a shared environment, and customers desiring a cloud-based version of MOSS need to purchase a virtual server environment in which to operate it.
Enter SharePoint 2010, slated fo
r release on May 12. SharePoint 2010 has been architected from the ground up to support a shared platform. This means that hosting companies can now offer a full-featured SharePoint product without the added overhead of dedicated virtual environments. This welcome development enables completely new scenarios:
- Full-featured, affordable SharePoint for small and medium businesses
- The potential to create shared collaborative environments across multiple companies, particularly in industries where project-based work crosses organizational boundaries - film & television, construction, travel & hospitality are all examples
- The ability to integrate processes both internal and external as part of an overall value chain
Major new product releases are always exciting to service providers such as ourselves. SharePoint 2010 promises to be a game-changer for our customers, and we are looking forward to our offering SharePoint after its release to manufacturing!