What The Hell Does Sharepoint Do?
wglb: In addition to the good comments here, it seems that this is a way to do collaboration within an enterprise without having to deal with DBAs and other highly managed federations.  It is an end-around to a lot of those.As to why they don't look to free alternatives, in MS enterprise shops, that question never comes up.Finally, it makes it pretty hard to move away from MS if you have your whole corporate consciousness embedded in sharepoint.