SharePoint: Office Collaboration Evolved

In our last post we featured Microsoft's solution to instant messaging in the workplace, which incorporated a small fraction of the cloud's power; the power to collaborate in real time. Microsoft has also released a Web technology based server for companies to manage they're sites easily. Debuted in 2001, Microsoft SharePoint evolved from a combination of Frontpage, Office Server Extensions, and "Team Pages" built on share technology with Exchange and the "Digital Dashboard". After releasing versions 03', 07', and 10', SharePoint has become a suit of software made to manage your website cooperatively with people in the rest of your development team. The suit consists of Microsoft SharePoint Server, Search Server, Foundation, and Designer.

The first and most vital software in the suit is Microsoft SharePoint Server utilizing a powerful Microsoft SQL Server for data storage, essentially handles all site content data. Sites on SharePoint are ASP.NET 2.0 web applications that are served using IIS and a SQL Server database as a data storage back end.

Released in March 2008 as Search Server 2008, the handy search tool provided in the suit works in hand with Windows Search. For both the querying engine and the indexer, SharePoint Server shares its architectural underpinnings with the Windows Search platform. And for easy metadata editing Microsoft Office Search Server allows you to search metadata attached to documents.

Formerly known as Windows SharePoint Services, SharePoint Foundation is a free add-on that gives users access to a web portal with great tools for adding features like sharing, content management, and security.

Then finally there's SharePoint Designer, which used to be Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer 2007 (although they're not compatible); a great way for web developers to edit web pages without having to edit the code itself, relieving a very stressful process of web development.

With Microsoft Visual Studio on the way as well, developers using SharePoint will have a lot to look forward to in this powerful family of software. Are you already using SharePoint? Well upload a short video illustrating how SharePoint has helped your business and you could win a pass to the Microsoft SharePoint Conference in Disneyland.