SharePoint Hosting – Comparison of Windows SharePoint Services WSS 3.0 and MOSS 2007

                                                                                         

There is a lot of interest in SharePoint hosting in businesses big and small. Actually, MS SharePoint hosting can refer to two products – Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 (WSS 3.0), which is a platform and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS 2007) is a packaged product that offers additional services. You can acquire these products through hosting service providers as hosted SharePoint or hosted MOSS 2007.

Windows SharePoint Services (WSS 3.0)

Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 (WSS 3.0) is included with the newer versions of MS Windows Server (Microsoft Windows Server 2003 R2 onwards) or can be rented in the form of SharePoint hosting with WSS 3.0 packages offered by applications service providers. An older nomenclature for WSS was SharePoint Team Services. WSS is a platform that facilitates collaborative activities, supporting browser based access (http and secure https) and editing of documents; organization of documents into document libraries; version control capabilities; templates and workflows; contact and task lists; and Web 2.0 features for user developed content such as wikis, and blogs. The underlying programming behind WSS 3.0 is ASP.NET 2.0 which programmers with experience in Visual Studio .Net can customize.

Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS 2007)

Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS) is a package that provides additional functionality in addition to those available with WSS 3.0. If you are a small to mid-sized business looking for functionality in your SharePoint hosting, WSS 3.0 is quite sufficient for you. However, if your company needs more sophisticated functionality then hosted MOSS 2007 may be suitable. With the standard version you get ready-made workflows and reporting, advanced policy management, auditing and records management features, increased personalization of the sites, as well as enterprise search and people search. The enterprise edition of hosted MOSS 2007 includes search capabilities over business data and the Business Data Catalog. Some may benefit from the Business Intelligence capabilities such as Report Center, Excel Services, and Dashboarding that are included in the Enterprise edition of Microsoft Office Server 2007 hosting.

A few specific differences between the two products are listed below:

Enterprise Content Management – MOSS 2007 hosting conveniently beats hosted WSS at this point. MOSS is featured with MS Content Management Server product, which effectively controls portal roots along with content management abilities. WSS is formulated with an objective to include collaborative ability along with the present WSS users.

Collaboration – At this point, WSS hosting and hosted MOSS serve equally well for collaboration, because they grant diverse collaboration features like blogs, wikis, document collaboration tools, surveys, calendars and several more. Hosted MOSS grants efficient feature to get connected with social networking, but right now it is not possible in WSS hosting.

Business Intelligence – With Hosted MOSS 2007 you get additional Business Intelligence capabilities. On the other hand, not every business needs that and
WSS hosting is sufficient for most.

About the author:
Adrian Gates (Adrian@apps4rent.com) is a Business Manager with Apps4Rent (http://www.apps4rent.com/sharepoint.html); which offers premium hosted Exchange, Microsoft SharePoint Hosting Services and Microsoft Exchange Hosted Services

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