Why I love SharePoint

I have to admit it, I love SharePoint. I'm a real fan. Microsoft finally got it right. While taking part in the Heads of IT annual retreat last week, I was asked the question "SharePoint, what is is anyway?". Though question you'll say, and I would have to concur. I don't have any problems selling the benefits of SharePoint to anybody. If a vaccum seller was to knock on my door, he'd probably leave without having made a single sell, but having bought a copy of Microsoft SharePoint. I'm that passionate about the product. However, trying to get a straight definition to somebody about what the product really is, isn't an easy task. We've heard it all, SharePoint is the biggest swiss army knife. It is growing with every new release, and includes more and more fields of expertise.

My answer to the question, was the typical answer of any developer who previously had some exposure to ASP.NET development. SharePoint allows you, when building an online collaboration application from the ground-up, to save about 80% of all of your development time. You don't have to deal with coding your authentication, security, your document management functionnality, and even, in some occasions, your data model (by using lists instead). Most of the IT folks think SharePoint is expensive, and that you are paying for stuff you'll never use. While this may be applicable for the full blown entreprise edition, the Windows SharePoint Services (called Foundation in 2010) comes free with any Windows Server license. I say, an entreprise needs to have a pretty strong business case to prove that they need the Entreprise features before making the investment.

You got to learn to love the product, it will revolutionnize how we do business.