That’s right.  You can use the free version of SharePoint 2010 to run your public facing website.  SharePoint Foundation 2010 is free.  SharePoint Foundation 2010 may be a good fit to run your public facing website.  In order to look at this in a completely scientific manner, realize that there are literally hundreds of web content management systems out there (see CMS Matrix).  In reality, I see about 10 CMS platforms in use.  There are the commercial platforms (SharePoint, SiteCore, Ektron are the most frequently used ones) and there are a couple of free options (WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, Plone are pretty common).    I would be very surprised if anyone was able to find a single CMS platform that is all things to all people, but I wanted to present SharePoint Foundation as an option for running a FREE CMS platform.  Even if you knew that there is a free version of SharePoint, what most people don’t realize is that SharePoint Foundation is a great option for running web sites of all kinds – not just team sites.  It is a great option for many reasons, but in reality it is supported by Microsoft (not just a community or a small fly-by-night company), it is FREE, and it is extremely easy to get started.  SharePoint is also quite large.  The ecosystem of users, authors, conferences, blogs, communities, and so much more.  From a functionality perspective – it’s hard to beat SharePoint.  Even the free version, SharePoint Foundation, offers simple data connectivity (through BCS), cross browser support, accessibility, support for Office Web Apps, blogs, wikis, templates, document support, health analyzer, support for presence, and MUCH more.

In order to show some of the completely of what comes with this free version of SharePoint 2010, I thought it would make sense to use Wikipedia.  Doesn’t everyone use Wikipedia as a credible source?  It is WIKIPEDIA, after all.

Wikipedia shows that a web content management system typically has the following components:

SharePoint Foundation 2010 is an incredible product.  Not only does it provide robust collaboration capabilities, web site management tools, security management tools, and data integration tools, but SharePoint Foundation 2010 is free.  Foundation 2010 is available to download from Microsoft today and can be used for any type of site, internal or external.  I’ll be covering quite a bit about SharePoint Foundation 2010, so it makes sense to start with some simple install notes and screens that will guide absolutely anyone through a basic install.

When you first launch the SharePoint Foundation 2010 installer, you are presented with a dialog to help you with a little guidance and links to the install guide, upgrade guide, and the hardware and software requirements.  Assuming that everything is ready to go, you can install the software prerequisites.

Once the prerequisites are installed, then you can click Install SharePoint Foundation.

It is important to note the type of installation that you are performing.

Stand-alone will install all components on this single computer.  Stand-alone will also automatically install and configure an instance of SQL Server Express 2008.  This is a very simple installation process, but has some limitations.

A Stand-alone installation configures a single computer with all the necessary files and settings to create a fully functioning SharePoint implementation, including Web server, application server, and database.   SQL Server Express 2008 is installed and configured to provide data storage capability.   SQL Server Express is based on the Microsoft SQL Server architecture, but it has the following limitations:

• Lack of enterprise features support.
• Limited to one CPU.
• One gigabyte (GB) memory limit for the buffer pool.
• Databases have a 4 GB maximum size.
• SQL Server Express will not support a server farm configuration or a multi-processor computer.

In addition to the SQL Server Express limitations, the inherit SharePoint Foundation Stand-alone configuration limitation is that you cannot add servers to create a SharePoint farm.  If you need to add another WFE later – you won’t be able to.  If you anticipate the need to scale up to a larger or more robust installation, choose the Complete option.

You can perform a stand-alone installation either by selecting Stand-alone on this screen or by clicking Standalone on the previous screen. The difference is that by clicking Stand-alone on this screen, you can choose the installation path. After this screen, both options follow the same steps and result in the same outcome.

If you choose the Complete install, SharePoint Foundation 2010 will install all components. You can add additional servers to form a SharePoint farm, including load balanced WFE servers.  The Complete option installs a Web server and configures the computer to provide application server functionality.   The SharePoint Foundation 2010 Complete install option does not provide database functionality.   You must provide connectivity and credentials settings to connect to an existing SQL Server instance.   It is important to note that you can download and use SQL Server Express 2008 for free.  You can even install it on the same computer.  Although SQL Server can be installed on this same computer, it is recommended that you install SQL Server on a separate computer.

There are other install options.  You can also install SharePoint Foundation 2010 for a front-end Web server rather than Complete, but you must use the command line to do so.

If you receive an error message or encounter a problem, visit The Microsoft Office 2010 Setup Resource Center for troubleshooting information and how to contact Microsoft Product Support.

If you do not change the default installation directory, the default installation directory is located at:  C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\14\Data

I typically recommend leaving the installation directory in the default location.  While some IT shops have standard operating procedures that all installations must be on non-OS drives (D Drive), I’ve found it easier to troubleshoot new environments if I don’t have to hunt around for files.  The next SharePoint consultant that you bring in will immediately first look in the Hive (typically the default install directory) for SharePoint related info.

After you select the path, the installation wizard will begin a progress bar as it installs the environment.

After the successful installation, you will be prompted to run the SharePoint Configuration Wizard.  Typically, you can leave the check box selected and immediately run the configuration wizard.  There are instances where you may want to delay running the configuration wizard.  If you are planning to run the Office Web Apps (which will run on SharePoint Foundation 2010), it is easier to install the necessary files at this point (after SharePoint install but prior to running the configuration wizard).  If you first run the SharePoint Configuration Wizard, then you will be configuration the Office Web Applications via PowerShell scripts.

If you opted for a SharePoint Foundation 2010 Stand-alone Server install, then the SharePoint 2010 Products Configuration Wizard will immediately begin the ten step configuration process.

If you opted for an option other than a stand-alone server install, then you will be prompted to either Connect to an existing Server Farm or Create a new Server Farm.  You will then be prompted to supply database connection credentials with appropriate permissions on the SQL instance that you will be using.

That’s it!  After you’ve let the wizard run through, you should automatically be directed to a default SharePoint Foundation 2010 site that looks a lot like the screen below.

I’ve tried to cover a lot of information in this SharePoint Licensing mini-series, but there is still a lot of information to cover.  For lack of a better format, I’m also including a SharePoint Licensing FAQ.

Q: My company has a lot of employees that will be using SharePoint 2010.  Can we just purchase the SharePoint 2010 for Internet Sites license and use that?
A: No.  If you will have “private sites” are to be used exclusively by employees, then site needs SharePoint Server 2010 plus at least the SharePoint 2010 Standard CAL for each employee that will use the site.  In reality, if you have 1200 sites in your SharePoint 2010 environment and a single site is ‘staff only’, then you need to purchase licenses based on CALs for your staff.

Q: Does every server in the farm need SharePoint 2010 installed?
A: Every SharePoint server in the farm needs a server license, whether WFE, Index, Query, etc. – except for dedicated SQL Servers that are not running any SharePoint services.  If the server is running any of the SharePoint services, then you must ensure that the server has the appropriate SharePoint 2010 license.  Additionally, each SharePoint server needs the same set of server licenses. For example, if you are running an Internet-facing farm that has 2 WFE and 1 index server, you must use the SharePoint 2010 for Internet Sites license on all 3 servers. If you are running a single 3-server farm that is supporting your Intranet, Extranet, and Internet sites, you must run 2 different licenses on each of the 3 server servers: SharePoint 2010 for Internet Sites (for public access) and SharePoint Server 2010 (for employees-only sites, for which you would also need appropriate CALs for staff).

Q: If we were to initially deploy the "Internet Server" version, would we be able to later launch private sites for users who were covered by individual CALs (staff)?
A: Yes. The SharePoint 2010 licensing model allows for both versions of the product (internal and external) to be installed on the same farm. If you deploy SharePoint 2010 for Internet Sites only, and then decide that you want to add sites for CAL-based users later, you need to purchase the appropriate CALs and the SharePoint 2010 Server license in addition to the Internet license. The Internet Sites license can not be used with CALs, because CALs are only usable with the SharePoint 2010 Server license.

Q: Where do I install a SharePoint 2010 CAL?
A:  You don’t install the CALs anywhere.  Like a lot Microsoft software, SharePoint 2010 environments are based upon the ‘honor system’.  You must have appropriate licensing to utilize the software, but there is no actual licensing check that will disable unlicensed users from accessing your SharePoint 2010 server farm.  SharePoint 2010 has usage logging that can be used to determine who is accessing your SharePoint 2010 environment(s) to help keep you licensed correctly.

Q: We want to deploy an EXTRANET – sites that will be used for collaboration between Staff and Non-Staff (partners, members, customers, etc).   What license do we need?
A: From my understanding of talking with tons of resellers and Microsoft Licensing Reps, Extranets are the one area that there is some licensing flexibility.  To be clear, we are defining a SharePoint 2010 Extranet as  containing collaborative sites that are not staff-only and do not allow public anonymous users (everyone is authenticated).  For this type of site, you could purchase the SharePoint Server 2010 license and the appropriate CALs for ALL authenticating users – staff and on-staff.  OR, you could purchase the SharePoint Server 2010 for Internet Sites license and no CALs.  If you are wanting to run a single STAFF-ONLY site, then you must purchase the SharePoint Server 2010 and CALs.

Q: If we are deploying Excel Services, Access Services, or Visio Services, do we need licenses of Office 2010 for everyone?
A: Maybe. Users that are consuming Excel Services do not need to have Excel installed.  Same goes for Access Services and Visio Services.  However, any user that wishes to create spreadsheets using Excel to deploy on the Excel Services component of SharePoint 2010 Enterprise will need a license of Excel 2010. If your consultant or contractor is developing all of your spreadsheets, then that is the individual that needs Excel 2010 – not your staff.

Q:  I have external users that already have SharePoint 2010 in their own companies (not our company).  Can they be allowed to access our systems with their own licenses, or would we still have to purchase new CALs for them?
A: You cannot use CALs from an external company license for anything in your company.

Q: Do I need Microsoft Office 2010 to use Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010?
A: No.  In fact, you do not even need to use any version of the Microsoft Office desktop application to get a tremendous amount of benefit from SharePoint 2010. You can use SharePoint 2010 for content management, surveys, discussion boards, picture libraries, web pages, email record management, content types, and many other things (including document management for PDFs, PSDs, TIF, GIF, JPG, and many more non-Office document types) without purchasing or using any version of Microsoft Office. I’ve seen many articles/blogs/newsgroup entries that indicate that you need Office to use SharePoint – this is absolutely incorrect!

If you are using the document collaboration features, you can get a lot of benefits from using Microsoft Office.  The later the version of Office, the more features you will have access to.  You can, however, leverage older versions of Microsoft OFfice with SharePoint 2010, including Office XP, Office 2003, Office 2007, and Office 2010.

Q: Can I use FAST Search for SharePoint with SharePoint 2010, Standard, or SharePoint Foundation 2010?
A:  No.  FAST Search for SharePoint requires SharePoint Server 2010, Enterprise.  For internal use, you simply purchase the FAST Search for SharePoint server license.  For external use, there is no specific license to purchase.  You must purchase an additional SharePoint Server 2010 for Internet Sites, Enterprise, server license and add another server to the farm dedicated to running FAST.  Of course, larger environments will require more planning and architecture than ‘simply add another server’ – but hopefully you get the gist.

The previous posts in this mini-series include explanations of the different products involved with SharePoint 2010:

• SharePoint 2010 Licensing Part I: Foundation, Server, and Designer
• SharePoint 2010 Licensing Part II: Windows Server and SQL Server
• SharePoint 2010 Licensing Part III: Search, Office Web Applications, and Project Server
• SharePoint 2010 Licensing Part IV: Scenario Examples
• SharePoint 2010 Licensing Part V: SharePoint 2010 Licensing Costs

Hope this helps.

SharePoint 2010 is more powerful and easier to use than ever before, but how do you license SharePoint 2010?  SharePoint can be hosted on premise (meaning you can host it yourself), hosted in a managed environment (like a Rackspace or FPWeb), or hosted directly with Microsoft with SharePoint Online.  Regardless of where or how you choose to host your SharePoint environment, the licensing and product information is consistent.  Details regarding SharePoint 2010 prerequisites and SharePoint 2010 system requirements are crystal clear.  SharePoint 2010 is 64-bit only, requires 64-bit Windows 2008 Server, and requires a few other components before installation can begin.  Unlike prerequisites and installation details, SharePoint 2010 licensing is still a mystery for many people.  In this first post, I’ll breakdown different licensing and product questions to help clarify SharePoint 2010 licensing.

Microsoft SharePoint Designer 2010.  SharePoint Designer 2010 (SPD) is a client tool (similar to Dreamweaver, Homesite, etc.) that is specifically designed to manage SharePoint 2010 sites.  SPD is used to manage lists, libraries, workflow, CSS files, Master Pages, Page Layouts, External Content Types, External Data Sources, and much more.  SPD is free and can be downloaded directly from Microsoft.  Download either SharePoint Designer 2010 32-bit or SharePoint Designer 2010 64-bit.

Microsoft SharePoint Foundation 2010.  SharePoint Foundation 2010 is the next logical version of what used to be called Windows SharePoint Services (WSS).  Had Microsoft continued with the previous naming convention, then this product would have presumably been called WSS 4.0.   SharePoint Foundation 2010 is a free addition for Windows 2008 Server.  This is an important note:  SharePoint Foundation 2010 is free.  Windows 2008 Server is not free.  You must have appropriate licensing for Windows 2008 Server to run SharePoint Foundation 2010.  That said, you can utilize Microsoft SharePoint Foundation 2010 to run many different types of sites: internal sites, external sites, departmental sites, and even public facing anonymous sites.  To be perfectly clear – you can run an anonymous site on SharePoint Foundation 2010 – you just need to have the appropriate Windows 2008 Server licenses.  Access the SharePoint Foundation 2010 download directly at Microsoft.com.

Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010. As with Foundation, Microsoft changed the name of this product as well.  The previous version was called Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007.  The latest version is called Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010.  Notice the omission of the word “Office” from the SharePoint product title.  From what I gather, dropping the word “Office” was to try and help clarify that Office is not a requirement to run SharePoint.  While SharePoint works spectacularly with Office, there are hundreds of solution types that can be deployed with SharePoint without any type of Office client deployed.

There are two distinct license models for SharePoint Server 2010, one for internal deployments and one for external SharePoint deployments.  Internal and external deployments are not defined by how the systems are accessed, but rather by “who” accesses the SharePoint environments.  If the SharePoint farm is being accessed by organization staff only, then we will define that as internal use.  These internal SharePoint environments require a Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 server license with the appropriate SharePoint 2010 Client Access Licenses (CAL).  If the SharePoint farm is being accessed by “non-staff”, including anonymous users such as a public facing website, then we will define that SharePoint environment as external.  External SharePoint deployments require the SharePoint 2010 for Internet Sites licensing.  Both of these license models offer a Standard edition and an Enterprise edition. 

For a very good comparison of what comes in SharePoint Foundation 2010, SharePoint Server 2010 Standard, and SharePoint Server 2010 Enterprise, see Microsoft’s own Compare SharePoint Versions page and SharePoint Licensing Details page.

First, the “internal” license model.  SharePoint Server 2010 is licensed in a traditional client/server model.  The SharePoint Server 2010 server license is required for every server in the SharePoint farm.  If you have a single server farm or a multi-server farm, each server (physical or virtual) must have the SharePoint Server 2010 server license.  The client consists of the SharePoint 2010 CAL.  You can purchase either user or device SharePoint 2010 CALs.  User CALs are the most common, as it authenticates each named user from any device they choose to use (mobile, laptop, desktop, etc.).  I see the device CAL more commonly at locations with fixed workstations, such as libraries, school labs, and hospitals.  The device CAL allows any  number of users to authenticate, but only from the licensed devices. 

There are two SharePoint Server 2010 CALs – Standard and Enterprise.  The SharePoint Server 2010 CALs are additive.  This means that in order to get the Enterprise features, you must purchase both the Standard CAL and the Enterprise CAL.  In an organization where you have users that will access Standard features and a subset of users that will utilize the Enterprise CAL, you can purchase only the Enterprise CALs for those specific users.  It is up to you to police the environment to ensure that Enterprise features are not being accessed by Standard licensed users.  SharePoint 2010 does provide usage tracking so you can see who is using which areas and features of the site(s).

Then there is the “external” license model which consists of both Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 for Internet Sites Standard and Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 for Internet Sites Enterprise.  As described above, these 2 licenses are for “non-staff” sites, such as public facing, external, anonymous sites.  For the most part, the Standard and Enterprise licensing models for Internet follow the same functionality rules as the internal client/server CAL model – with the addition that Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 for Internet Sites Standard will only support a single top level domain and related subdomains (such as StoverEffect.com, MySites.StoverEffect.com, Blog.StoverEffect.com, etc.).

Here are some other notes regarding SharePoint Server 2010 for Internet Sites.  No CALs are required for users licensed through SharePoint Server 2010 for Internet Sites.  The Internet Sites licensing model is for external users only. Internal users can use this license only if all content, information, and applications are also accessible to external users. If the server has items that are for internal use only, those users require CALs, and their servers require licenses for SharePoint Server 2010.  This means that you can mix licensing models on the same instance of SharePoint – but you have to purchase both sets of licenses.  An important point us that the people who create content for external access can use SharePoint Server 2010 for Internet Sites. Server and CAL licensing is not required for people who use SharePoint only to author information – it is specifically only required if you create a site, subsite, application, or information that is FOR internal use.  One final note: SharePoint Server 2010 for Internet Sites, Enterprise, also includes the rights to FAST Search Server for use in Internet or Extranet scenarios.

To complete the product download links, you can download trial versions of all of these versions of Microsoft SharePoint:

SharePoint Server 2010 for Internet Sites, Enterprise Trial
SharePoint Server 2010 for Internet Sites, Standard Trial
Microsoft SharePoint Server Standard 2010 Trial
Microsoft SharePoint Server Enterprise 2010 Trial

Even easier, you can download a fully configured evaluation Virtual Machine called the 2010 Information Worker Demonstration and Evaluation Virtual Machine (RTM).

That’s it for now.  I’ll continue this series on SharePoint 2010 products and licensing soon to include scenarios, FAQs, and other products (such as FAST, Office Web Applications, Project Server, etc.).  Please feel free to ask questions as I’ll help in any way that I can.  However, I do not work for Microsoft.  I am not a software reseller.  I highly recommend that you discuss all of your licensing needs with a Micorosft Licensing Specialist or your software reseller/vendor, but keep these posts handy because I have found that most resellers are quite unclear about actual licensing details and will usually err on the side of selling you more software than necessary.

According to Microsoft’s doc Creating Shared Hosting Solutions on Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 available at office.microsoft.com/download/afile.aspx?AssetID=AM102157711033
"Also note that account creation mode is a deprecated feature of Windows SharePoint Services 3.0. Although this feature is supported through version 3.0, the product team recommends that customers plan to move off of it at their earliest convenience."
We’ve yet to see if this will hold true, but for those of you using Account Creation mode, start plannig an alternative solution!