Making sense of SharePoint 2010 (Via Tim)

Extracted from the original post

Customizing, extending and sharing

Adoption of Microsoft SharePoint is growing rapidly, with Microsoft reporting “double-digit growth” in its latest financials, yet it remains widely misunderstood. What can you do with SharePoint, what is the difference between the free SharePoint Foundation and the full product, and what are the pros and cons?

Microsoft calls SharePoint a “business collaboration platform”, a suitably vague description for a multi-faceted product. SharePoint can be a content management system for an internal or external website, a document management system, a business search portal, and more.

So what is SharePoint really? Technically, it is an ASP.NET application which runs on Internet Information Services (IIS), Microsoft’s web server, and which stores most of its data in a SQL Server database. Conceptually, it is the outcome of Microsoft’s efforts over many years to create a web storage system, a document repository accessible via a web browser. One reason for SharePoint’s growth is that it answers the question: how can we give employees remote access to internal documents? If you are using a traditional file server, this normally requires a VPN (virtual private network), a viable option but one which can compromise security as well as making heavy demands on bandwidth. SharePoint enables remote document access without a VPN.

For complete post click here