Today I'm kicking off an all-new series, and one that's very different from anything I've attempted previously. The reasons for the appearance of this new series, which will run every Friday here in SharePoint Blank, are twofold. The first reason is that, having observed that over 18,000 (and climbing) people type "what is SharePoint" into their Google search box each month, my manager suggested that I take on the answering of that question as a personal challenge of sorts. The second reason is that, within 24 hours of my manager's issuance of the assignment (for, in truth, it was more of an assignment than a suggestion), I found myself again attempting to explain to my decidedly non-technical mom just what is SharePoint, and exactly how does Bamboo fit in?
All of which is not to say that I'm writing this series for my mom, though to a certain extent I probably will keep her in mind as an "ideal reader" of sorts, but more as an acknowledgment that there are a whole lot of people out there who suddenly find themselves in the position of having to begin using SharePoint, and many of them will likely have never even heard of SharePoint before.
If I had to attempt to answer the question of "what is SharePoint?" (at gunpoint, say) in a single sentence right now, it would almost certainly have to be a run-on sentence. Thus, my prime directive with this series, between thinking out loud and researching the answers of people who are much smarter than me, is going to be to arrive at a crisp definition of SharePoint that I can call my very own.
What's that? You actually want to hear my everything-but-the-kitchen-sink, run-on sentence of a definition ... and is that a gun you're holding to my head?!
OK, if I must, but I'm doing this under protest, and in the hopes that you'll return each Friday to join me as I make my way towards a more elegant answer to the question. Here goes...
SharePoint is a Microsoft platform which allows for enterprise-class (and an actual enterprise-branded offering) collaboration and content management, which (depending on the version you're using) leverages social media constructs to enhance team collaboration and, as a publishing and content management tool, provides automatic versioning (with both major and minor versions, if desired), all of which comes with built-in security features which can be applied to as wide or small a subset of users as necessary. Oh, and SharePoint is built in such a way as to allow for independent developers and third-party providers such as Bamboo to develop Web Parts, applications, and custom solutions which can be seamlessly added on, exponentially increasing the feature set of the "out-of-the-box" SharePoint experience.
OK, that's it, put the gun down, already. Allow me just one caveat though: Even that mouthful of an attempt to define what SharePoint is probably leaves out as much as it includes, but I had to stop somewhere. Stay tuned as I attempt to hone that answer into something I can use to reliably define SharePoint to my satisfaction. (And, if all goes according to plan, to my manager's satisfaction. If all goes spectacularly well, it will even be to my mom's satisfaction.)
Catch up on the entire "What is SharePoint?" series:
Posted
Jul 10 2009, 03:56 PM
by
John Anderson
John Anderson joined Bamboo Solutions as Manager of Content & Syndication in May 2008 after a 12-year career at AOL. New to SharePoint at the time of his hiring, John was tasked with creating a new blog for the just-launched Bamboo Nation community in which he would document his daily SharePoint learning process. Thus was born the end user-centric SharePoint Blank, for which John authored 200 posts within a year, and which he continues to write today. Today, John writes SharePoint Blank in addition to his responsibilities as Managing Editor at Bamboo and, while he learned much about SharePoint in his first two years, he gleefully celebrates the release of SharePoint 2010 and the reset button that the new platform represents for SharePoint Blank.