Comparing WSS and SharePoint

Many organizations struggle with understanding which of the SharePoint products is most appropriate for their needs. The following sections identify some differences between the products and usage scenarios for each. While this book has been written to specifically review SharePoint from the perspective of SharePoint, the following section discusses some comparisons between WSS and SharePoint. To start you off, you should remember the following:

Windows SharePoint Services 3.0, often referred to as WSS, has the core document management and collaboration platform features. With WSS, the average information user can build web-based business applications without numerous technical resources. Because WSS is available free to the Windows Server 2003 system, deploying web-based applications has never been easier. This is largely because of templates and existing site modules that allow users to add documents, images, and information via a simple form rather than by using code. You can create a new site based on an existing template in just a few seconds. Windows SharePoint Services is also tightly integrated with Microsoft Office Word, Excel, and Outlook so users can create and share content using a familiar, comfortable environment.

Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, often referred to as MOSS 2007, is the nexus of the Microsoft Office system. It delivers the robust, enterprise-targeted features of SharePoint Products and Technologies, which accelerate business processes across the intranet, extranet, and Internet. SharePoint delivers the tools to create, publish, and manage web-based content from a cohesive environment. SharePoint also offers the tools to automatically aggregate content from the Windows SharePoint Services team sites, rolling up content from multiple sources to a central location, making information management even easier.

WSS Primary Benefits
The primary features of WSS revolve around document and information management and collaboration. The following sections outline the major features of the platform that have been responsible for its wide adoption across the enterprise.

More Effective Document and Task Collaboration: Team websites offer access to information in a central location as well as the following capabilities:
An extranet-extendable single workspace for teams to share documents and information, coordinate schedules and tasks, and participate in forum-like discussions.
Libraries provide a better document creation and management environment. Libraries ensure that a document is checked out before editing, track a document’s audit history, or allow users to roll back to past revisions.
Document level security settings ensure that sensitive information is secure and available only to select individuals.
Advanced task-tracking lists and alert systems keep users updated on current and upcoming tasks.
Templates for creating wikis and blogs to share information across your organization quickly and easily.

Reduced Implementation and Deployment Resources: Because WSS is available to Windows Server 2003 customers as a free download, implementation time and cost is greatly reduced, resulting in the following benefits:
Deploying team collaboration sites is easy, so organizations can free up skilled resources and focus on more important tasks.
Users can immediately apply professional looking site themes.
Customized workspaces have prebuilt application templates for most common business processes, such as workflows.
Because WSS offers seamless integration with the Microsoft Office system, employees can use common applications such as Outlook email to create and manage documents without the need for a custom implementation.
Better Control of Your Organization’s Important Business Data: Windows SharePoint Services offer the following enhancements for data and information management and security:
Enhanced browser and command-line based administrative controls allow you to perform site provisioning, content management, support, and backup. Subsequently, a business can become more efficient and reduce costs.
You have more control over your corporate infrastructure. IT has access to security and policy settings at the lowest item level using enhanced administration services. WSS’s increased security and easy deployment mean your organization can reduce its dependency on skilled IT resources.
Using advanced administrative features, IT can set the parameters under which business units can provision sites and allow access, ensuring that all units fall within an acceptable security policy.
The Recycle Bin item retrieval and document versioning capabilities provide a safer storage environment.
Embrace the Web for Collaboration: By extending and customizing WSS, you can:
Create collaborative websites complete with document libraries that act as central repositories for creating, managing, and sharing documents with your team.
Create, connect, and customize a set of business applications specific to scaling your organizational needs.
Take advantage of Sharepoint Designer to customize and brand your team sites and applications.

Sharepoint 2007 and Sharepoint 2003

If you’re familiar with SharePoint Server 2007’s predecessor, SharePoint Portal Server 2003, you might appreciate a quick look at the changes in the new version.

While SharePoint Portal Server 2003 offered a great method of aggregating content from multiple sites to a single, easy-to-navigate location, the process was dependent on a user’s manual actions to publish the links to the portal areas, a dependency that highlighted the platform’s shortcomings. If the person who updated content forgot to publish a link to the portal, business decision makers could not access information.

Microsoft responded with SharePoint Server 2007, which offers tools and features that automate business processes and content aggregations. Built-in Web Parts, such as a site aggregator and Content Query Web Part meant that the site administrators can specify what content should automatically roll up to the main portal sites, eliminating manual updates and resulting in sites with up-to-date information.
With 2007, the technology in the top-level portal sites is exactly the same as that available on the team sites. This was not the case for SharePoint Portal Server, where there was a very distinct difference between working in a team site and working with portal content. Users had to learn each separate tool and there was confusion as to what activities were appropriate for each location.

The architectural changes and feature enhancements make it possible for you to use SharePoint for a wider range of organizations and scenarios. SharePoint Portal Server required that users authenticate using a Windows-based authentication system and Active Directory for user profile information. Because of its platform enhancements, SharePoint 2007 uses a variety of systems for authentication due and supports multiple authentication providers as well as LDAP sources for user profile information. In addition, SharePoint has much better support for extranet and Internet-facing scenarios.

SharePoint Portal Server 2003 has no mechanism for automated workflow or business processes. SharePoint 2007 includes several workflow templates that business users can further customize to suit their specific requirements.

What is SharePoint Portal 2007 ?

What is Portal Technology?

A corporate portal is a gateway through which members can access business information and, if set up properly, should be the first place an employee goes to access anything of importance. Portals differ from regular websites in that they are customized specifically around a business process. In SharePoint, a portal may actually consist of numerous websites, with information stored either directly on those sites or in other systems, such as fileshares, business applications, or a regular Internet website. Because making informed business decisions is key to becoming and remaining successful, it’s important that the information you place on a portal is secure, up-to-date, and easily accessible. Because a business’s marketplace may span the globe, an organization also needs to have the information that reflects the needs of employees from multiple specific regions.

As an example, consider a new employee who has just joined an organization. In addition to learning her new job responsibilities, this employee must quickly get up-to-speed on the various company processes and policies. A good portal should provide all the company reference and policy information that the employee needs to review as well as links to all the information systems and websites that employee needs to do her job. Information should be stored in easy-to-browse locations, based on subject or topic. In situations where the location of a document or information is not obvious, the employee should be able to type words into a search box and receive suggestions. The employee should also be able to share information with others. In many ways, a good portal should act as a table of contents for all the information and websites related to an organization or topic.


What Is SharePoint?
SharePoint is an extensible and scalable web-based platform consisting of tools and technologies that collectively form what’s known as SharePoint Products and Technologies. The total package is a platform on which you can build business applications to help you better store, share, and manage digital information within your organization. Because you can build with or without the need for code, the package empowers the average business user to create, deploy, and manage team websites, without depending on skilled resources, such as systems administrators or developers. Using lists, libraries, and Web Parts, you can transform team websites into business applications built specifically around making your organization’s business processes more efficient.

SharePoint Products and Technologies has two major offerings:

Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 is a free offering available to Windows Server 2003 and Small Business Server 2003. It contains the core functionality needed for document management and collaboration, such as document libraries and lists.

Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 is a newer version of SharePoint Portal Server 2003. It offers the same features of WSS in addition to the functionality required for Enterprise Content Management as well as Excel and Forms Services, Business Data Catalog, and Business Intelligence. SharePoint also features a more robust and customizable search engine as well as special features for displaying information stored in the SharePoint environment in a more customizable and aggregated format than is possible with WSS.