SharePoint Team Sites: Rich Information Collaboration & Document Management Solution

SharePoint Solving Problems

In 2008 I proposed to the Charlotte chapter of the Black Data Processing Associates (BDPA) to use Microsoft SharePoint Team sites to manage our chapter and possibly become our main website. I presented to BDPA Charlotte the powerful and rich document management and calendar features that we as Information Technology professionals were so accustomed to using in corporate America. Prior to this we solely used Yahoo Groups for document management and calendar usage, but most of us work for corporations that block or restrict Yahoo Groups for us to effectively use it to collaborate, manage, and share information while on the job. Not to mention that you don't need a web designer to maintain it.

SharePoint Collaboration Features

http://www.microsoft.com/sharepoint/capabilities/collaboration/features.mspx

Cost Effective Solution

For $29.00 per month an organization, club or small business can obtain SharePoint services from an Internet Service Provider (ISP). To support SharePoint In house it could cost over $3,000 to purchase the product, hardware to run it, with software licenses and thousands more in support and maintenance costs.

SharePoint Website as Internet Presence

Many organizations, businesses, the federal government and colleges are using SharePoint to efficiently manage their Internet website allowing department to quickly update information on their own with no lag time due to a web designer finding time to update the website. View the following links for SharePoint examples and case studies.

• Top 100 SharePoint Sites
  
  • http://www.wssdemo.com/Pages/topwebsites.aspx
    

  
  

• Top 17 case studies for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and several new MOSS-based web sites
  
  • http://blogs.msdn.com/sharepoint/archive/2007/05/03/top-17-case-studies-for-microsoft-office-sharepoint-server-2007-and-several-new-moss-based-web-sites.aspx
    

SharePoint ISPs

We selected sharepointhosting.com to suite our needs, but there are many more ISPs that offer the service. Many will allow you to use the service free for 30 days before being billed.

The Future

I feel that the future of website management will be done with products like SharePoint that will allow organizations without skilled programmers or web developers to manage their documents and work collaborately.