Understanding the Capabilities of SharePoint 2010

Answering the question “What is SharePoint 2010?” is not an easy task. This is primarily because, unlike many of the other Microsoft tools on the market, SharePoint is designed to be a platform that can be molded and shaped to fit the needs of virtually any organization. One SharePoint environment may look drastically different than another SharePoint environment and may be used for completely different tasks.

Indeed, SharePoint is designed to be customized to solve individual business problems and to satisfy specific organizational needs. It is built to serve as a full-fledged document management solution, collaboration portal, team site workspace, public-facing website, extranet partner collaboration environment, or all these things at the same time.

SharePoint 2010 has evolved over the years from a disparate set of small-scale tools into a complex and capable tool in use at a large proportion of organizations in the world. But where did SharePoint 2010 come from? Before understanding what this version is, it is first important to gain a better understanding of the history of SharePoint products and technologies and how we got where we are today.