First, let’s oversimplify SharePoint.  SharePoint is software used to build websites.  That’s it.

However, SharePoint is more than just a single-purpose web site tool.  It’s a platform that you can use build your Intranet, extranet, private social network, professional network, search engine, and public-facing website.  It’s more than just a web content management system, blogging system, wikie, or document sharing interface.  Once you and your team knows a little bit about SharePoint, you can focus on doing your job and less on learning and supporting niche applications and tools.

SharePoint is feature rich.  SharePoint sites can consist of documents, pages, images, videos, discussions, blogs, wikis, calendars, sites, subsites, security, workflow, search, dashboards, BI, and much more.  The fact that you can construct so many types of solutions without ever writing code is a powerful feature in itself.  I’m a huge proponent of configuration over customization.  If you do opt for customization (a.k.a writing code), then the SharePoint world is your oyster.

SharePoint is now bigger than Microsoft.  There are literally thousands of options available hosting, third-party products, add-ons, solution starters, templates, samples, examples, and even source code (see CodePlex).  Even companies that are traditional Microsoft competitors develop products that ‘tie in’ to SharePoint – even IBM.

Availability of Information.  Do a search for “whatever product or solution you are thinking about using”.  Search for Drupal, SiteCore, Ektron, WordPress, Joomla, or any of the hundreds of other website management products out there.  Then do a search for SharePoint.  Then go to Amazon.  Search for books related to your product.  Then search for books related to SharePoint.  If you want to become completely self-sufficient (and not rely on the vendor/consultant/IT guy), there does not seem to be a platform anywhere that has more information freely available than SharePoint.

Community.  There are more developers, end users, architects, consultants, companies, vendors, Microsoft partners working around SharePoint than any other solution or platform I have ever seen.  The SharePoint community exists both online and in person!  There are user groups that regularly meet and talk SharePoint in every major metro area – and international!  The single most important facet of the community is the welcoming attitude of the SharePoint community.  Join any group and participate, or just sit back and watch.  The community is extremely helpful.

Conferences.  There are so many conferences every year that I no one has an accurate count.  Even if the conference isn’t dedicated to SharePoint, there seem to be SharePoint tracks or sessions at most of the conferences I’ve seen.

Return on Investment.  This is one that gets thrown around a lot – largely because of rumors and suppositions.  One of the most ill informed arguments I’ve heard is that SharePoint is expensive and open source is free!   First, SharePoint Foundation is free.  If you are running Windows Server 2008, you can download SharePoint and use it for … wait for it … FREE!    Okay, but let’s be realistic.  I know that you’ve heard this before – nothing is free.  You have to pay for servers, bandwidth, resources, skills, education, support – regardless of the technology.  If you run any technology platform – you pay for it.   Every related to implementation influences the ROI.  Availability of information, stability, education costs, capabilities, stability, recurring investments.  Also, what happens when angry IT guy that put in the LAMP solution quits or goes out of business.  Who, where, how are you going to get support?  Is the community and ecosystem big enough to support you in a year?  What about in 5 years?

Technology decisions are complex.  Do I think SharePoint is a good fit for every organization?  Yes!  (just kidding).  I think we can all agree that there is no single technology that is a perfect fit for every organization for every solution.  I think every organization should give serious consideration to the big picture when selecting technology platforms.  Do you want a single platform or individual niche applications?  Do you want commercially supported tools or open source (or a hybrid)?  While I don’t work for Microsoft, I’ve never heard of an IT manager getting fired for choosing Microsoft as a technology platform.

YouTube made it easy to understand for everyone.  Upload a video from a camera and share it with the world for free.  Simple enough, but with the association industry there are usually more strings attached.  Who can upload videos?  Which videos are branded?  Which videos require membership for access?  Which videos can be purchased independently or in addition to membership?

In today’s associations, video upload and distribution is largely a business discussion – not a technology discussion.  The technology is available.  I can watch any NetFlix movie on my iPad anytime I want.  It is easy.  The business objectives of who, how, when, where, and why members, volunteers, and the public get to upload or view videos is often decision by committee.  That’s the complicated part.

As far as the technology goes, SharePoint 2010 has video streaming using Silverlight right out of the box.  Out of the box means that it requires no further configuration of any kind to get it to work!  If you are running SharePoint 2010, you can add a Media Web Part and then choose a video or upload a new video.

So who can upload videos?  Anyone that you want to grant access to upload videos.  Who can watch videos?  Anyone that you want to grant rights to the videos.  A custom authentication provider can even provide roles based upon commerce purchases, committees, groups, board members, and so on.  This means that a transaction can associate a user with the appropriate rights to watch a video.  This role can be associated with the user immediately upon purchase and could last an hour, a day, a week, or forever. 

SharePoint 2010 video streaming is very, very good.  It is easy to upload a video.  It is easy to drop the video web part on any page and embed video directly on the page.  However, some organizations provide a tremendous amount of video distribution and want it all private, controlled, and want detailed analytics on it – specifically how to MONETIZE the video services.  Microsoft has you covered as well with IIS Media Services.   IIS Media Services (in its third generation) gives you unprecedented control over your media serving capabilities.  The good news is that these services can be used with your SharePoint environment.  With all of this video, all you have to worry about now is that you have the bandwidth to support your extremely popular site!

Here are some details about the capabilities available with IIS Media Services.

 Bit Rate Throttling – The Bit Rate Throttling module has compelling features for media and data delivery. For many scenarios, this feature will reduce bandwidth costs while increasing per-server capacity for concurrent download connections.

 Live Smooth Streaming – Live Smooth Streaming enables adaptive streaming of live events to Silverlight clients. Using HTTP to deliver live events takes advantage of the scale of existing HTTP networks and keeps content close to the end user and makes true HD (720p+) a reality for live Web broadcasts as well as drastically increasing live event availability.

 Smooth Streaming – Smooth Streaming enables adaptive streaming of media to Silverlight clients over HTTP. Smooth Streaming provides a high-quality viewing experience that scales massively on content distribution networks making true HD media experiences (720p+) a reality.

 Smooth Streaming Client – The IIS Smooth Streaming Client Development Kit allows you to build rich Silverlight user experiences that take full advantage of IIS live and on-demand Smooth Streaming capabilities.

 Web Playlists – Web Playlists is an IIS 7.0 Extension that provides developers and hosters unprecedented control of how media content is delivered to users. Personalize content, prevent ad skipping, and monetize your assets.

If you work for a nonprofit, try and make use of TechSoup, located at http://www.techsoup.org.  TechSoup offers nonprofits extremely discounted software, in addition to free information, resources, and support. 

This pricing list is dated as of today’s internet searches (July 3, 2010).  I was looking around on sites that have published costs.  I haven’t listed government, academic, or various costs with different structures.  This pricing list is not complete and should not even be considered ‘accurate’.   This pricing list is to give you an idea of the software costs for planning purposes only.  Work with your reseller (have I said that enough yet?).

SharePoint 2010 License Costs and Fees

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

Hope this helps.