REDMOND, Wash., Jan. 8, 2001 — Microsoft Corp. today announced branding and RC1 availability for its forthcoming enterprise portal solution, Microsoft® SharePoint™
Portal Server. Previously code-named
“Tahoe,” SharePoint Portal Server is the flexible portal solution from Microsoft that allows companies to easily find, share and publish information. The new server provides seamless knowledge portal integration with the Microsoft Office and Windows® operating system productivity desktop environment, allowing enterprise customers to integrate robust document management, search, subscriptions and inline discussions into their document collaboration process. And, with an architecture built on extensible Web Part technology, SharePoint Portal Server offers companies the most effective way to build and extend intranet portals.
“Organizations today want to ensure that the valuable corporate knowledge stored in documents, Web servers, file servers and e-mail is readily available to employees making important decisions each day,”
said Jeff Teper, general manager of the SharePoint Portal Server Business Unit at Microsoft.
“SharePoint Portal Server is a flexible, off-the-shelf solution that can search and index the most important enterprise content sources across an organization and make the information available to anyone in the company via a familiar user interface.”
Based on leading-edge search technologies from Microsoft Research, SharePoint Portal Server has broad support for enterprise content sources and data types so users can find pertinent information quickly and easily. With one of the most comprehensive, timely and relevant search engines in the industry, SharePoint Portal Server can index multiple content sources, including Web servers, file servers, Exchange public folders, Lotus Notes databases, etc., and present search results based on an industry-leading probabilistic ranking algorithm. In addition, SharePoint Portal Server supports adaptive crawling, allowing the server to
“learn”
where information changes the most frequently on relevant sites.
The Microsoft industry partner community has embraced SharePoint Portal Server as an important business tool for customers and is building dedicated solutions and services around the product. Compaq Computer Corp. sees SharePoint Portal Server as a valuable component of an enterprise customer’s knowledge management infrastructure.
“Our customers include large global corporations who need instant access to market and corporate information to make business decisions. However, finding that information is a challenge since it resides in heterogeneous sources scattered throughout their organizations,”
said Rick Fricchione, group practice vice president, Compaq Global Services.
“Compaq is poised to provide SharePoint Portal Server solutions, including servers, storage and services, which will enable our customers to have rapid and easy access to mission-critical data to make effective business decisions.”
In addition to its powerful content aggregation technology, SharePoint Portal Server includes robust document management features that allow companies to incorporate business processes into their portal solution through check-in/check-out, version tracking and approval routing functionality. Built on Internet and industry standards such as XML, the digital dashboard-based UI can be easily customized and extended by adding Web Parts: reusable components that can contain any kind of Web-based information. Web Parts allow companies to integrate any existing enterprise systems, such as analytical and collaborative tools in Microsoft Office, Microsoft Exchange Server and Microsoft SQL Server™
, into their corporate portal.
SharePoint Portal Server also allows customers to search and index information stored in Web sites based on SharePoint Team Services, a new server-based team Web site solution from Microsoft that allows small teams and ad hoc groups to easily manage activities and work together effectively. Web sites based on SharePoint Team Services provide central locations for team members to share information such as calendaring, task assignments and announcements. Integration features in the upcoming releases of FrontPage® and Office provide further opportunities for team members to customize their sites and to seamlessly incorporate information from the Office applications into their Web sites.
Availability
RC1 is now available for download from the Microsoft Web site at http://www.microsoft.com/sharepoint/ and will be the only release candidate before the final version, due later this year.
About Microsoft
Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq
“MSFT”
) is the worldwide leader in software, services and Internet technologies for personal and business computing. The company offers a wide range of products and services designed to empower people through great software — any time, any place and on any device
Microsoft, SharePoint, Windows and FrontPage are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corp. in the United States and/or other countries.
The names of actual companies and products mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners.
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