I find a lot of people asking me this at times – what’s the difference between Windows SharePoint Services and MOSS (Microsoft Office SharePoint Server).
Simply put – WSS 3.0 and MOSS 2007 are collaboration tools made available by Microsoft. Both these tools are build on Microsoft’s .NET platform.
Either one or both products are used to communicate, collaborate, and share data within an organization. The most basic difference between the two solutions is the upfront investment.
Basically, WSS is the free framework that runs the underlying objects that make up “SharePoint”. MOSS is a commercial enterprise collaboration and portal application that runs on top of this WSS framework. In short, WSS is free to most companies whereas MOSS requires a minimum of software purchases and sometimes requires a hardware purchase.
Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 (WSS) ships bundled with the purchase of Windows Server 2003 or Microsoft Small Business Server 2003. This allows organizations to quickly implement WSS and setup an internal company web. The creation of sites and spaces is easy and once the underlying foundation is set up, requires little if no assistance from an organization’s IT team. Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS 2007) takes the collaborative foundation of WSS to another level. With an additional software investment, MOSS 2007 allows organizations to take the foundation laid by WSS v3.0 and expand on it. Additional features sit on top of WSS, use the core WSS framework, and extend it in such a way that is beneficial to larger companies, enterprise deployments, and portal scenarios. Below is a short list of key differentiating features and functions inherent to MOSS 2007
