SharePoint 2010 Licensing - SharePoint Foundation
Since my most popular blog post of all time happened to be the one on licensing for SharePoint 2007, I thought it may be valid to put together some information for people trying to understand how to position SharePoint 2010 in their enterprise (read: figure out which edition to purchase).
This is going to be several articles, focusing on Foundation, Standard, Enterprise, Internet Sites and Online.
Windows SharePoint Services v.3 > SharePoint Foundation 2010
From Introducing SharePoint Foundation 2010: “Windows SharePoint Services is now Microsoft SharePoint Foundation—the essential starting point for organizations that want the business benefits of Web-based collaboration combined with the value and security of an enterprise solution.”
As before, SP Foundation is going to be the free version of SharePoint that is arguably one of the most hated/loved in the Microsoft ecosystem. Features are generally the same as WSS, and is centered on collaboration with peers (through blogs, wikis, team workspaces and basic document management).
Personally, I think WSS was overlooked by many IT pros and business decision makers as a very powerful tool at the compelling price of free, and Foundation continues to be an important element in that space.
Just like WSS, Foundation is will still form the underlying architecture for the full server suite.
Important across all the SharePoint editions, the 2010 release is going to be supporting accessibility standards, ensuring that any solutions delivered with SharePoint 2010 comes with out of the box support for WCAG 2.0.
Tomorrow: Part 2, Standard Features.
