I spent a good deal of time today examining some of the things that SharePoint is and is not. Several people have taken the time to detail some of these, some on camera, others in audio, and still more in written form. I'll try to add my cents for the discussion.

I see SharePoint as a platform for the next generation enterprise computing environment. Wow, that's a mouthful. It can be so much more or so much less than that, and therein lays the beauty of SharePoint. At its core it's a web portal interface for file, document and knowledge sharing. I have had the pleasure of working with companies and teams that had deployed SharePoint only to #FAIL, because they did not understand what it is, and what it can be. At one place their computer guy installed it, and said 'Have fun' with no direction or training. A couple people tried, but it never took off :: #FAIL. At another place, it was installed, and the company jumped head first into its web access to file sharing, but never went beyond that. By the time they thought about it, they had several hundred gigabytes worth of files stored up there, but they could not back it up, much less optimize it. They had anywhere access to their files, but the service had deteriorated to the point users hated it. Again :: #FAIL.

So where does that leave us? First off SharePoint is so much, and so diverse that how one organization uses it may be completely and diametrically different to how another organization uses it. One company may only use it for wikis another may use it for Document Sharing. Even within a single company, one department may automate with Workflows while another shares calendars. The best feature of SharePoint is that it can do so much, modularly. And while we can modularly grow feature offerings to end users, we must build our portal platform from the ground up with a plan and a goal in sight. Like we have done with networks, preaching about having plans and goals that match the business goals, so must a SharePoint reflect the organization and its goals.

In a time when organizations are looking to become more efficient and get the most out of every dollar, SharePoint is poised as the portal platform upon which to build those efficiencies and align an organization in the right direction.