Keeping in mind that said business might use Microsoft Exchange.

Also please explain the difference between the product Sharepoint Server, and a actual Sharepoint Server/Hoster on the web.

Sharepoint allows multiple users to collaberate on a 'intranet' type site for the company. It is beneficial because it offers quite a few out of box features:

Group lists
Shared Documents
Knowledgebase

etc...

Its also backed by Microsoft so if your a MS shop it is considered the way to go when trying to create an intranet for your business.

Ok a couple of questions.

1. So is getting Sharepoint Hosting a viable choice for a business? (as opposed to spending a lot of money and implementing Sharepoint internally?)

2. Any Sharepoint hosters you recommend, or any place you can point me in the direction of?

thank you by the way.

I'd recommend doing alot of reading before getting SharePoint. Basically you want to ensure you have at least one person in your shop who is going to become your SharePoint guru. There is alot that can be done with it, but it requires alot of knowledge also to get any real value out of it.

Personally we chose Central Desktop over Sharepoint. Main reasons:

- To us it was more user friendly than SP
- It is internet based
- Your clients can also use it so you can have shared space
- We are not hosting it or managing it

Hosted sharepoint is a great solution for business looking to collaborate or share information.

It has excellent integration with applications like MS Office 2007 and other windows products.

We use Sharepoint as we have developers in diverse locations - it really allows everyone to work together, to not overwrite each other, to see what others have done, when and why - overall a great solution

I agree to the comment above re making sure u have a knowledgeable guru as it can be a tough learning curve.

We have been using it 5 months now and we are just getting smoothly running

Also, the built in version control in Sharepoint is good for tracking changes to your documents without too much overhead for users (although there are packages out there that do it better, Sharepoint is pretty user-friendly).

Sharepoint 3.0 is very popular with us and I personally would be lost without it for sharing information with team members.

Sharepoint is a valuable tool to any business, it is a great portal for communication and sharing files as well as project management. You might want to look into a host that offers the full HMC lineup, There is a lot you can do these days to provide hosted business connectivity.