Instead of the usual habit of saving documents to a hard drive, Microsoft wants you to place them in server-based collaborative "work spaces" that can be accessed by multiple people. Such document sharing is one of the main ideas behind SharePoint, a critical part of Microsoft's strategy to unite business applications and processes. It's also viewed as a major motivator for getting businesses to upgrade to current versions of key Microsoft products.
SharePoint began life several years ago as a tool for creating corporate portals that serve as entryways to documents such as human resources forms, but more recently, it has expanded functionality and split.
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