WSS and MOSS – What’s the Difference?

This year, I’m starting a new section on my blog on Microsoft SharePoint and to start with I’m posting about the two main flavours that Microsoft offers – SharePoint Portal Server and SharePoint Services.

SharePoint is being pushed by Microsoft and also with the announcement that SharePoint would be replacing the Public Folders that were available in Exchange, it certainly requires some understanding. I’ve heard people talk at length about SharePoint, met IT Managers who wish to implement SharePoint in their organization, planned SharePoint with some small and medium business segment owners and had a common observation after the meetings. Most of them do not know what are the basic differences between the two flavours. And trust me, if you do not know the basic difference, the end results would not be the same that you expected. I’ll start with explaining the two flavours so that we can get a basic understanding of the differences.

Windows SharePoint Services (WSS)

Windows SharePoint Services are a part of Microsoft Windows Server feature pack and come absolutely FREE. It can be downloaded from the Microsoft website and has a no-fuss installation.

Windows SharePoint Services or WSS is primarily focused on workgroup level collaboration. No, this does not mean that it cannot be made operational in an Active Directory environment. It can be easily integrated with your current AD environment and can be quickly setup to support basic collaborative items like team sites, document workspaces, blogs, wiki and meeting workspaces. These are some of the frameworks that come out-of-the-box with WSS and more such Application Templates for Windows SharePoint Services can be downloaded from the Microsoft Web Site. Moreover, once you have gathered enough understanding on how WSS works and how it stores and retrieves data, you can scale it up further to connect with MS Access, MS Excel, MS Word, MS PowerPoint and even your Exchange Server. Document version control, RSS feeds, Task Notifications, Basic Workflows and Email Alerts – all come along with WSS.

The main focus area when thinking about SharePoint implementation in your organization would surely be the cost factor. Yes, SharePoint Portal Server does have high costs and that’s why you should always start playing around with WSS to being with. This will help you to decide what you need next in terms of what WSS cannot offer. Also, once you put WSS to use in the company, it would also become easier for you to convince the management in moving up to SharePoint Portal Server.

In short, WSS should be the starting place for you if you are looking at using SharePoint for your organization.

Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS)

The first portal product introduced by Microsoft was termed Digital Dashboard which introduced the concept of WebParts. However, this technology never picked up and did not even manage to get out of the Beta release stage. On the other hand, the MS Office group team at Microsoft came out with another product towards collaboration by the name of SharePoint Team Services (STS). This is what lead to the birth of SharePoint Portal Server somewhere in the year 2001. Today, SharePoint Portal Server (MOSS) has been upgraded to work on the .NET Framework with least amount of development oriented architecture.

The major benefit of using MOSS is the way it provides the feature of using Business Intelligence (BI). MOSS offers simple ways to provide key performance data using the Key Performance Indicator (KPI) WebParts and build BI reports to be published on dashboards. BI and KPI can assemble and display business information using Excel Spreadsheets, MS SQL or any other 3^rd party line of business application.

MOSS also offers “My Sites” which are individual mini-sites meant for employees. Each employee can create his or her personal site thorough a self-service request. The site can be classified to show Private as well as Public content, skill sets, contact information and more. It can even be integrated with Active Directory to pull information from AD like the manager, colleague, contact information, etc. And can be scheduled through the Central Administration to update the SharePoint data as and when changes are made in Active Directory.

The buck does not stop here. MOSS has more or better functionalities/options like Single-Sign On, Portal Sites, Enhanced Search (not only text and documents but also people). The Enterprise version of MOSS provides Excel Services, Business Intelligence Dashboards, Internet Publishing and Content Management, Web based InfoPath Forms and more.

Summary

As you can see, there are lot of similarities between the two products. Mainly where the functionality differs is that MOSS allows more aggressive and targeted indexing for search, offers BI and KPI and Web Based Services for Excel and InfoPath. I’m sure to start with, these would not have much importance in the company which mainly requires a collaboration platform for their employees so that they cut down on the transfer of collaborative files and documents via email, can keep a track of the documents and maintain versions. Go ahead and start polishing your understanding on Windows SharePoint Services. The more you use it, the better it will become and then you can think of scaling it further by switching to Microsoft SharePoint Portal Server.

For those who would like a detailed comparison, Microsoft has published this in an Excel sheet and can be downloaded from here.