SharePoint Portal Server 2003 is a secure, scalable, enterprise portal server built upon Windows SharePoint Services that you can use to help your customers aggregate SharePoint sites, information, and applications into a single portal. All features of Windows SharePoint Services are available in SharePoint Portal Server 2003.

Microsoft SharePoint® Portal Server 2003 enables enterprises to deploy an intelligent portal that seamlessly connects users, teams, and knowledge so that people can take advantage of relevant information across business processes to help them work more efficiently. Here are the top 10 benefits of using SharePoint Portal Server 2003 in your organization.

Create a complete view of your business

Access all of the information, documents, and applications that you use through SharePoint Portal Server 2003. Find and reuse timely and relevant information from systems and reports, and quickly locate and access documents, projects, and best practices by searching or browsing—all through the portal.

Web Parts enable you to assemble a view of complementary information from multiple sources, so you can view customer information from Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems, Microsoft Outlook®, file shares, and Web sites at the same time.

Put relevant information at your fingertips

Be more productive by having immediate access to up-to-date, relevant information. You can organize all of the information, files, and applications that you access throughout the day in a single view on My Site. With single sign-on, SharePoint Portal Server 2003 provides direct access to the sections of an application that most interest you—without having to remember a password.

Audience targeting enables IT professionals to customize an experience for you based on your role, hierarchy, or interests—pushing relevant news, links, files, applications, and Web Services to your portal. Plus, you can even sign up for alerts to find out when information has been created or updated anywhere in the portal.

Share knowledge across the organization

Make it easy for business units, teams, and individuals to contribute content to the portal. Business units can integrate their SharePoint portal into the enterprise portal, enabling them to share knowledge with other business units. Teams can easily make the content in their Microsoft Windows® SharePoint Services sites discoverable through the portal through browsing or searching, and portal users can publish documents and best practices to the rest of the organization by adding them to the public view of their personal sites.

Find and make the most of organization's intellectual capital

The industry-leading search technology in SharePoint Portal Server 2003 enables you to locate files, project plans, and best practices in file shares, Web sites, Microsoft Exchange Public Folders, Lotus Notes, Windows SharePoint Services sites, and databases instead of re-creating the wheel. You can find more than just documents and Web sites; SharePoint Portal Server 2003 provides access to the people and teams that contribute knowledge to your organization. Links take you to My Sites and SharePoint sites so you can investigate other contributions from the experts. You can also organize information, files, and sites, enabling you to find a wealth of relevant information by browsing.

Find, aggregate, and provision SharePoint sites

SharePoint Portal Server 2003 takes advantage of Windows SharePoint Services sites to create portal pages for people, information, and organizations. The portal becomes a collaborative experience by extending the capabilities of Windows SharePoint Services sites, enabling you to organize, manage, and provision SharePoint sites from the portal. Teams can also publish information in their sites, sharing their best practices with the entire organization.

Create self-service portals

Create self-service portals for employees, partners, and customers. Employees can access human resources (HR) systems and sign up for benefits by using the same portal that they use everyday to access people, teams, and knowledge.

Because SharePoint Portal Server 2003 is easy to use, you can deploy it as an extranet and enable customers and partners to place and track their orders or search for support documents—improving customer satisfaction while reducing your support costs.

Automate business processes

SharePoint Portal Server 2003 helps relevant information find you through Alerts and Audience Targeting. Alerts notify you when any relevant file, SharePoint site, person, or application has been added or changed. SharePoint Portal Server 2003 can even alert you when a specific expert or team adds new information to the portal.

Audience targeting enables IT groups to push relevant information and applications to a group of users with similar job roles, titles, or interests. Audiences can be created from the Microsoft Active Directory® service, distribution lists, hierarchies, or any other criteria that you define.

Speed adoption by using familiar interfaces and tools

New technologies often fail because they are too hard to use, and few employees have time to attend lengthy training courses. SharePoint Portal Server 2003 speeds user adoption and lowers training costs by using a familiar browser interface and allowing users to perform portal tasks within their Microsoft Office System programs, such as provisioning a Document Workspace, searching the portal, and receiving portal alerts in Microsoft Office Outlook 2003.

IT professionals can create Web Parts that expose information, applications, and Web Services by using familiar tools such as Microsoft Visual Studio® .NET and Microsoft Office FrontPage® 2003.

Reduce development time and cost with out-of-the-box portal services

Deploy SharePoint Portal Server 2003 right out of the box without any additional development work. Portal services such as search, SharePoint site management, topics, news, and My Sites are available immediately. Web Parts that provide read/write access to programs such as Outlook 2003 and Microsoft Office Excel 2003 are also available right out of the box, lowering your development costs.

Ease deployment with flexible options

Regardless of whether your organization wants to take a top-down or bottom-up deployment approach to portal development, SharePoint Portal Server 2003 has a model that fits your needs. The portal is built on a scalable, highly distributed architecture that you can deploy on a single box or server farm. You can link Windows SharePoint Services sites, business unit portals, and the enterprise portal together at any time, enabling knowledge to be shared across an organization. What's more, through shared services, you can deploy enterprise-wide services such as search, indexing, audience management, and My Site hosting in one central place and then consume them from other portal sites.