Windows SharePoint Services Hosting

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Welcome to Windows SharePoint Services Hosting for Hosted Messaging and Collaboration 4.5.

Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 is a versatile technology that organizations and business units of all sizes can use to increase the efficiency of business processes and improve team productivity. Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 provides a foundation platform for building Web-based business applications that can flex and scale easily to meet the changing and growing needs of today's businesses. Robust administrative controls for managing storage and Web infrastructure give IT departments a cost-effective way to implement and manage a high-performance collaboration environment.

With a familiar, Web-based interface and close integration with everyday tools, including the Microsoft Office system, Windows SharePoint Services is easy to use and can be deployed rapidly. With Windows SharePoint Services Hosting, individual software vendors (ISVs) and service providers can give their customers rich Web applications based on SharePoint Web parts. This section provides guidance to help you begin implementing Windows SharePoint Services Hosting in your environment.

Note

As of Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 with SP1, you can now install Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 on Windows Server 2008. As with the Windows Server 2003 operating system, you must download and run Setup and the SharePoint Products and Technologies Configuration Wizard. You cannot install Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 without service packs on Windows Server 2008.

Provide a Foundation for Web-Based Applications

With Windows SharePoint Services version 3.0, hosting service providers can tailor or extend the Windows SharePoint Services foundation to create new, efficient, Web-based tools and services specific to the organization, department, business process, or industry vertical. Through a highly customizable and extensible platform, service providers can tie these new tools and services to enhance their existing service offerings by making it easier to add the following kinds of features:

  • Management business documents with enhanced document library support and a common repository for document storage.

  • The capacity to build rich, flexible, and scalable Web-based applications and Internet sites based on the Windows SharePoint Services platform to meet the specific needs of client organizations.

  • Access to quickly and easily customize SharePoint sites and build reporting tools and applications tailored to specific tasks without writing or deploying new codes.

For more details on the advantages of using Windows SharePoint Services 3.0, see Microsoft SharePoint Products and Technologies.