There seems to be a rash of products out from Microsoft as of the last couple years that, well, how should we say, have names that are a bit confusing? The last time I remember this much confusion was around Visual Studio Team Foundation Server (TFS) and Visual Studio Team Editions. One would have thought that perhaps a better marketing strategy would have been to better clarify these.

It seems, we are here again. This time, there is SharePoint. With the release of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, it seems that everything is now called SharePoint. And, well, it sort of it. But, what does it all mean and what are the differences?

For the most part, there is now an industry understanding on the lingo, and I'll attempt to outline here (and before all of you die hards get upset with me, please understand this is meant to be a generalization to simplify terminology).

Windows SharePoint Services (WSS)
WSS 3.0 is now out, and is the foundation for the latest SharePoint offerings.

Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS)
A huge collections of "add-ons" for WSS 3.0. These include Enterprise Content Management (ECM), Single Signon (SSO), Etc.

Enterprise Content Management (ECM)
Features for Content Management, such as the ability to version your website content, security based publishing, etc.

Web Content Management (WCM)
Upgrade path for Microsoft Content Management Server (MCMS) 2002. All functionality of MCMS is now rolled into MOSS 2007.