By Chris Alliegro [bio]
Posted: Apr. 2, 2007

• Sidebar: SharePoint Server 2007 Builds on WSS 3.0
• Illustration: SharePoint Server 2007 Technology Stack

The following an excerpt of a Research Report published by Directions on Microsoft, an independent research firm focused exclusively on Microsoft strategy & technology. More samples of our content, as well as a list of upcoming articles and reports are also available.

Microsoft has fielded a pair of related products for creating and managing team, corporate, and personal portal Web sites. Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) 3.0, the latest release of the company's platform for team collaboration sites, has better features for organizing and storing content than its predecessor. SharePoint Server 2007, which is built on WSS 3.0 and thus inherits all of that product's features, is the latest version of Microsoft's strategic platform for corporate portals (the product was formerly called SharePoint Portal Server). SharePoint Server offers incremental improvements for portals and takes on a variety of new roles, including enterprise content management and business intelligence. These new features could expand SharePoint Server's installed base and offer new opportunities for partners to integrate and customize the product.

For an overview of the tools, services, and applications provided by WSS 3.0 and SharePoint Server 2007 and the relationship of the two products, see the sidebar "SharePoint Server 2007 Builds on WSS 3.0".

WSS 3.0 Improves Team Collaboration

A free component of Windows Server, WSS is Microsoft's platform for team collaboration sites. WSS team collaboration sites are similar to SharePoint Server portal sites technically, but they are smaller in scope—instead of being entry points to corporatewide information, team sites are used to encourage and aid collaboration among smaller groups of workers. For example, a product development team might use a team site to gather ideas for product features, collaborate on specifications, track project schedules, and communicate project status.

Furthermore, where portal sites are typically tightly controlled by dedicated IT workers, developers, and content authors, team sites are more ad hoc in nature—it is not uncommon for all team members to have permission to create and contribute to sites. This do-it-yourself quality contributes to WSS's appeal: it enables workers to create professional-looking Web sites with no coding and minimal IT involvement. Once it is installed and configured, workers can create and edit sites without further IT assistance.

The combination of better document management, usability, and administration in WSS 3.0 will probably make the product a no-brainer upgrade for many customers. In addition, customers might find that new features such as blogs and wikis could provide some incremental benefit to teams by providing simple-to-use mechanisms for sharing and exchanging ideas and collectively compiling and authoring content.

SharePoint Server Expands Beyond Portals

Along with its traditional role as a platform for creating and managing corporate portals, SharePoint Server 2007 assumes a variety of new roles, including records management, centralized spreadsheet management, Web content management, and business intelligence. Because of this expanded scope, Microsoft has dropped the word portal from the product's name; the previous version was referred to as SharePoint Portal Server 2003.

The following main areas are covered by SharePoint Server 2007:

Corporate portals. Although the term is broad, corporate portals are typically Web sites that give workers an entry point to corporate information and applications. For example, a corporate portal could provide access to (or even house) a self-service human resources application that helps employees look for new jobs in the organization and allows managers to add or update job descriptions. Although SharePoint Server 2007 does not introduce sweeping changes to its portal features, several incremental improvements and better administration tools could help customers speed creation of portal sites, better target site content to users, and ease administration of large, complex portals.

Enterprise content management. Microsoft promotes SharePoint Server 2007 as a platform for enterprise content management. It includes features for document management, which helps companies to organize important documents and make them easier for users to work with and find, and records management, which focuses on the storage, retention, and destruction of corporate records for legal, regulatory, or strategic reasons. In addition, SharePoint Server 2007 takes over Content Management Server (CMS) 2002's features for Web content management, which helps companies create and organize information for publication on Web sites. Enterprise content management is becoming steadily more important: as regulatory and legal pressures grow, even companies outside of heavily regulated industries are compelled to look at structured processes for handling documents, records, and e-mail.

Business intelligence. SharePoint Server 2007 adds new tools and applications to support business intelligence, a catchall term for the collection, processing, and analysis of data from a range of sources to aid business-related decisions. SharePoint Server 2007 allows nontechnical workers to define key performance indicators, which track the status of business metrics against predefined goals; create and manage reports; and create Web-based dashboards that display key performance indicators and related information. In addition, the new Excel Services feature supports server-side spreadsheet publishing and calculation and could help organizations that distribute Excel spreadsheets for reporting or analysis. SharePoint Server's easy-to-use features aim to help companies expand business intelligence to broader audiences and thus improve decision making across organizations.

Search. SharePoint Server 2007 improves enterprise search capabilities, which enable search of resources on a network, such as intranet sites, file servers, and business applications. The product includes many updates to specific search components that should add up to more relevant search results for users. In addition, SharePoint Server 2007 adds new capabilities for finding information about people and it can more easily index data stored in corporate business applications. The product's improved capabilities coupled with its relatively low price tag could make it an attractive alternative to expensive solutions from search specialists (such as Autonomy or Fast) or traditional enterprise vendors (such as IBM, Oracle, or SAP), which often bundle search into broader data storage or portal solutions.

In each of these areas, Microsoft comes up against stiff competition from entrenched players with mature products—competitors include Hyperion, IBM, Oracle, SAP, and Vignette. Furthermore, in certain areas such as document and records management and business intelligence, SharePoint Server is late to the game.

However, as is often the case with Microsoft products (particularly early versions), lack of comprehensive feature sets is often made up for by low initial cost. In fact, many prospective customers have likely already paid most of the cost for SharePoint Server 2007 since the product's Client Access Licenses (CALs) are part of Microsoft's widely licensed Core CAL, a major component of the Enterprise Agreements used by large customers. Such favorable pricing and Microsoft's insistent positioning of SharePoint as integral to its Office product family could help the product overcome perceived disadvantages relative to competitors.

Platform Creates Partner Opportunities

Although WSS 3.0 and SharePoint Server 2007 provide many readily usable features and applications, the products also offer many opportunities for partners. A collection of .NET class libraries and Web services provide programmatic access to SharePoint features and services; in addition, the complexity, scope of features, and many technical dependencies make SharePoint a fertile opportunity for integrators.

Opportunities for partners to work with or extend SharePoint include the following:

Creating custom applications. The SharePoint products can serve as the development platform for a variety of Web-based applications, such as those that provide self-service access to data and functions in back-end business systems. For example, developers could create a Web-based application that allowed workers to update time and attendance information stored in a human resources application. Developers can also create custom SharePoint site templates that address specific business problems, such as managing business proposals. Microsoft itself has produced a variety of downloadable templates that can help companies address specific problems and provide partners with a convenient starting point for more advanced or specialized SharePoint applications.

Extending the platform. Many opportunities exist for partners to extend WSS 3.0 and SharePoint Server 2007. Extensions can range from fairly simple custom Web Parts (Web page components that present information to users in a browser) to much more complex integrations with other systems and applications. Extensions from Microsoft partner Meridio, for instance, will let records managers configure policies that automatically move records from SharePoint repositories to Meridio's repositories, which support a wider variety of storage options.

Infrastructure help, training. Systems integrators and other partners can help customers plan for and set up physical infrastructure and required software components, and learn and take advantage of WSS 3.0's and SharePoint Server 2007's many features. In addition, upgrading could be complex, particularly for customers with large, customized sites built on SPS 2003. Integrators could find opportunities to help such customers identify and address potential upgrade problems and assist with migration to SharePoint Server 2007.

Pulls Office, .NET Framework, SQL Server

Portals have proven to be a strategic investment for many companies and an important source of income for Microsoft. Although Microsoft does not provide detailed adoption or revenue figures for SharePoint, it boasts of rapid growth of the product. Expanding the product's scope could help Microsoft sustain that growth—many existing customers will probably be encouraged to upgrade and the company could find that new features net new sales.

Growing the reach of SharePoint also benefits Microsoft in other ways. The product depends on several strategic Microsoft products and technologies; thus, SharePoint adoption drives uptake of those other products and technologies. (For a schematic overview of SharePoint Server 2007's technology foundation, see the illustration "SharePoint Server 2007 Technology Stack".)

The most important technologies that SharePoint depends on are as follows:

Windows Server 2003 is required for WSS 3.0 and SharePoint Server 2007. In fact, WSS 3.0 is considered a component of Windows Server and its use is covered by the Windows Server CAL.

.NET Framework 3.0, the latest version of Microsoft's application development platform, delivers several components for WSS and SharePoint Server. For example, it provides the Windows Workflow Foundation, a workflow engine, tool set, and programming interface that WSS 3.0 and SharePoint Server 2007 can use to guide workers through prescribed business processes, such as the review of a business proposal. WSS 3.0 and SharePoint Server 2007 also make extensive use of ASP.NET 2.0—for example, SharePoint sites use ASP.NET 2.0 master pages to provide a consistent look across pages and pages are generally composed of one or more ASP.NET 2.0 Web Parts.

SQL Server, rather than the Windows file system, stores all WSS and SharePoint Server content (such as documents) and configuration information (such as document metadata). Microsoft recommends SQL Server 2005 SP1 or higher.

Finally, SharePoint plays an important part in Microsoft's ongoing attempts to keep its Office client applications relevant in the face of looming threats, such as Google Apps for Your Domain, a set of Web-hosted productivity applications. While workers can access many SharePoint features from a browser, other tasks supported by SharePoint either require or work best with Office applications. For example, creating and editing documents will still be done with client applications like Office, the full Excel 2007 client is required to author and publish spreadsheets using Excel Services, and use of SharePoint's offline capabilities requires Office 2007.

Challenges for Customers, Partners

WSS 3.0 and SharePoint Server 2007 continue Microsoft's aim of popularizing Windows for team sites and portals. WSS descends from a line of team site products that dates back to the Office Server Extensions of Office 2000, while SharePoint Server 2007 is the third generation of a product introduced in 2001.

Despite their maturity, the products are not without catches for prospective customers. Possible snags for customers include the following:

Complex migration. Although many SPS 2003 sites can be upgraded to SharePoint Server 2007, organizations could run into problems with highly customized SPS 2003 sites. In addition, customers could find that their existing SPS 2003 hardware environments may need to be upgraded to support the greater resource demands of SharePoint Server 2007.

First version features. Many of SharePoint Server's new features may prove immature. For example, the product's records management features do not yet meet the minimal U.S. government requirements for records-management applications, and the Excel Services spreadsheet engine will not work with some types of Excel files.

Planning, training required. Organizations should not be fooled into complacency by the apparent ease of site creation and customization in WSS 3.0 and SharePoint Server 2007. Although creating sites is not difficult, forethought is required to ensure that those sites are effective corporate tools. Furthermore, corporate developers and IT workers will need to learn and apply many new skills to make best use of the products.

Fewer features with Office 2003. Organizations should recognize that some important features advertised for SharePoint require Office 2007 and will not be available unless they upgrade to that product.

What's Ahead

This report is geared to IT professionals and developers who want to orient themselves on the major additions and enhancements found in WSS 3.0 and SharePoint Server 2007 and the potential risks and challenges related to the deployment and use of these products. It should also provide readers an overview of what WSS and SharePoint Server are, the business problems they are designed to solve, and how those problems are addressed. The report includes material previously published in Update and contains the following chapters:

"WSS Improves Document Management, Collaboration" provides an overview of new and improved features in WSS 3.0 for managing documents and team collaboration sites.

"SharePoint 2007 Tweaks Portals, Administration" details the changes in SharePoint Server 2007 aimed at making portal sites more usable and easier to manage.

"Platform for Enterprise Content Management" outlines the new features in SharePoint Portal Server 2007 for document and records management. The section also describes the product's new features for Web content management, a role it assumes from CMS 2002.

"SharePoint 2007 Expands Business Intelligence" discusses SharePoint Server 2007's BI features, which include the new Excel Services server-side spreadsheet calculation and rendering engine.

"SharePoint 2007 Improves Enterprise Search" highlights SharePoint Server 2007's improved enterprise search capabilities, which enable search of resources on a network, such as intranet sites, file servers, and business applications.

"Integration with Office Enhanced" describes changes in SharePoint integration with Office, such as Outlook 2007's support of offline capabilities in SharePoint.

"Resources" contains links and pointers to additional material.

"Appendix: Requirements, Licensing, and Pricing" outlines pricing for SharePoint Server 2007.

"Appendix: Catalog Links SharePoint Server to Business Data" describes a new feature called the Business Data Catalog that helps developers extract data from business applications, such as SAP, and include those data in SharePoint Server 2007 sites.