As sort of a little background on Sharepoint, we can tell you that it was released as Sharepoint Team Services, which was something like a version 1.0. After this version, Microsoft has released two other upgrades: Windows Sharepoint Services 2.0 and Windows Sharepoint Services 3.0.

How can you get a hold of a copy of this software? Well, it is easy. Sharepoint is now included on Windows Server 2003, for free. So, if you have some licensed Windows servers, you can deploy and use Sharepoint rigth away. The latest version can be also downloaded from the Microsoft website, for free as well.

But doing in-house IT has its special requirements and considerations, which usually means that not every business can deploy and maintain such an infrastructure. And that is the main reason why you are on our website today. The other way around this is to contract a Sharepoint hosting plan. A shared hosting platform offering Sharepoint services allows small and medium sized businesses to take advantage of the powerful productivity tools included with this software, without sacrificing their financial bottom line. 

Some of the features to look out for when researching this option are: Blog creation support, knowledge repositories by the use of wikis, different types of workspaces, charts, possibility of working with surveys and discussions, calendars, external access capability, integration with Microsoft Office, RSS syndication, mobile access, security controls and search technologies.

SharePoint Pedia is a great resource for all the users of Microsoft SharePoint. Visit their website to check great tools and informational resources about this technology.

The most appealing characteristic of a Sharepoint hosting package is that the information is available 24x7 at any place around the world. And the amount of money involved is not representative and wont hurt the business' daily operations. So, the tool is very simple to implement using this method.

Security is always important and more when you have critical information posted on an internal or external web tool. Sharepoint provides several authentication mechanisms in order to secure your company's information. It is also important to look at the disaster recovery side of these things. Always backup your data and do it regularly; in the process remember to verify that the backup is good enough to put you back online in case of something happening.

In terms of vendors that offer these hosting services, in relation to SharePoint our longtime favorite is Mail2Web.com