DaveBirchall.com on Business Technology

Microsoft's cashcow

Well can you guess what the biggest earner is for Microsoft right now? I think  most people could guess that its wouldn’t be Vista, but I’m guessing a lot of  people would have their money on Office. Well wrong! The biggest earner for Redmond right now is Microsoft Office Sharepoint Server 2007. If that’s a bit of a mouthful then you will be glad to know that most people refer to its as MOSS. Now you know what a money spinner it is for Microsoft, lets take  a moment to find out what it does and what all the fuss is all about…

Sharepoint as its name implies is a collaboration technology where people get together and work on common tasks or projects. It is installed either locally or can be accessed via the web but its real smarts are in the flexibility of the platform.

Your company can no doubt be broken down into teams, for us we have delivery, sales, marketing, commercial services, support customer service and so on. Some of these groups can be be broken down into subgroups and a member of one group may have membership of another group.

Each group can be quickly given its own Sharepoint site and the components of that site can be tailored to the needs to the group. For example, an engineering group may store documentation or project management plans in their site. A sales team will be more focused on reports. Some teams may want to use shared Calenders or book resources such as meeting rooms. Your HR department may wish to have leave requests or workflow entered through Sharepoint.

Practically anything that is possible in custom software can be achieved to some degree with Sharepoint. Sure, it may need some additional tweaking and tailoring to fit but sharepoint has done away with a large amount of the coding that would be done with out it. This makes sharepoint an accelerator for custom software projects which is why we have been using it with some of our clients to deliver software faster and more cost effectively.

Take a look at some of the further reading or contact me to find out more about MOSS

Further reading on Sharepoint

• Why is Sharepoint so darn popular?
• Case Study
• Your free guide to getting started with Sharepoint

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