Introduction
"Why not just use Drupal? Its open source." This is a question that I have seen a lot from folks that are new to Content Management Systems (CMS). The answer rests within the age old saying "Apples to oranges" except this is more like apples to watermelons.
First I need to explain that I am by no means an expert in Drupal and there are definitely smarter SharePoint developers out there than myself. I currently work with SharePoint at Microsoft and have had the good fortune of seeing the world's largest and most robust SharePoint deployment in action. That being said, if you feel I've made an error please leave feedback and I will do my best to correct the original publication.
Different Target Markets
The biggest difference between the two products is their core competency and respective target markets. However, as both products and their supporting technologies have been evolving, the line between the two is blurring considerably. Typically Drupal is deployed as an internet facing site and SharePoint as an internal site. While SharePoint can make some awesome internet facing sites (Some examples), it is extremely expensive to purchase the SharePoint For Internet Sites (FIS) CAL.
Development
How a product is developed isn't always a big deal for people. However, when you really get down to the nitty-gritty considerations like security and scalability it can sometimes be a deal breaker.
Drupal is open source
Because Drupal is open source, anyone can work on and contribute to it. This has led to an extremely large community that is constantly adding new modules and themes. What typically happens is when someone realizes a need for a functionality they create it themselves. This often leads to quick advancement within the Drupal community and consequently there are a lot of modules and themes that are available for Drupal.
SharePoint is not
In some peoples' view (myself included) the fact that SharePoint is not open source is actually a plus. While the development of SharePoint products may often be slower, you typically get a very solid product from Microsoft because it has undergone extensive testing. Microsoft has spent millions of dollars in R&D for SharePoint. This makes for a much more airtight and secure product making it better suited for enterprise deployments.
Furthermore, SharePoint is compliant with Sarbanes –Oxley , GAAP, and HIPAA. I won't go into any more detail on this but understand that it is a VERY IMPORTANT quality as more and more businesses transition to a digital enterprise.
Supporting Technologies
Another huge divider between the two is the supporting technologies and add-ins. To be honest, this is an area where Drupal doesn't stand a chance. Drupal is essentially a web-design package. Meaning, if you want to manage content other than blogs, polls, or pictures you're barking up the wrong tree.
SharePoint on the other hand is specifically designed to be incorporated with a many of the Microsoft products such Office and Outlook. The actual possibilities of different types of integration are so far-reaching that to list them would be outside the scope of this article. A huge benefit of SharePoint is document management. SharePoint can search, index, and organize all the documents, emails, chat sessions, and just about anything else on your company's intranet. Furthermore, SharePoint does all of this while maintaining permissions: meaning if you don't have permissions to view a certain document or document type, it won't let you.
Another important feature of SharePoint is workflow. With SharePoint and InfoPath, you can create interactive forms. These forms can pull data from just about anywhere and let you work with it. The data can then be stored many different ways, approval can be requested, and emails can be sent…all automatically. SharePoint's gives a business the ability to completely streamline almost any process and reduce paperwork tremendously.
Future
In the future they're probably going to have to come up with different terms to describe these products. While they're both technically CMS products they do two very different things. SharePoint is going to keep evolving and with the rest of the windows products and will likely become common place in every medium-large company. Drupal on the other hand doesn't have many other markets that it can expand into. It will continue to do what it does well: build great websites.
Conclusion
I realize I rode the SharePoint bandwagon pretty hard in this article. This is partly due to the nature of my work. However, anybody planning on working in corporate America in the years to come should know about SharePoint, I guarantee you'll run in to it eventually. That being said, anyone with any interest in ever having a website should know how to use Drupal. It has a bit of a learning curve but the fact that it is free and has a large community makes it a great tool for any web designer's tool belt.
If you interested in learning more about similar technologies consider reading up on Joomla and Wordpress which are both big competitors to Drupal or Oracle Beehive which is trying to compete with SharePoint.
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