SharePoint

Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS 2007) is a server platform developed by Microsoft released as part of Microsoft Office Server 2007. The main features of SharePoint server platform are collaboration, content management, portal management, enterprise search, business process, business intelligence, social computing.

MOSS 2007 Capabilities

The following are specific information on each of teh capabilities written above for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007.

Collaboration - enable teams to work together through publishing of documents, materials, information, intellectual asssets, workflow implementation to a single portal location. Dispersed teams can work effectively thru this centralized location of information.

Social Computing - With the release of SharePoint Server 2007, it can boast of features that include blogs, wikis, rss which allow enterprise to implement social computing and share knowledge across employess throughout the company.

Portals - teams have the ability to create their own specific sites with pre-built templates and site definitions like list, document libraries, standard webparts, etc. This feature of MOSS easily allows team to request for their own space for project management purposes.

Enterprise Search - Microsoft has definitely built a robust search capability that runs on top of SharePoint. This allow the entire organization to search specific information tailored to their needs. People can search for the following: documents, archived materials, people, etc.

Enterprise Content Management - SharePoint boasts of feature packed enterprise content management which allows management of document libraries, information, archiving, auditing, approval processes, etc.

Business Intelligence - MOSS 2007 supports SQL Server and thus the ability to implement analytic services that help in building a comprehensive business intelligence system for the organization.

Business Forms & Processes - Forms can easily be created thru forms library or with the use of InfoPath that integrates well with SharePoint.

Office Integration - SharePoint has the ability to integrate seamlessly with Office tools such as word, excel, power point, outlook, etc. This feature allows the extension of SharePoint into a more feature rich portal.

Workflows, alerts, notifications - SharePoint has the ability to offer out-of-box workflow solutions but at the same time customization of these workflows is possible that allows approval processes and routing of documents and information throughout the organization rapid and easy. The alert and notification features of SharePoint allow users to get information throughout the system on an updated basis.

Conclusion

SharePoint Office Server 2007 is a heavy weight in enterprise server platforms that help organization in their information technology needs. MOSS 2007 sales have reached 1 billion dollars in two years and it continously grows.