The Wine Company Limited is a fictitious company that has been selling wines from all over the world via the Internet to customers in the UK, since March 2000. it grew from humble beginnings and now employs 25 people at its office and warehouse complex in the central belt of Scotland. Its staff includes one marketing manager called Gavin and an all-round IT person called Tony, who looks after everything from PC support to database management. Tony is also responsible for maintaining the company websites.

Over the last seven years, the company has had two public facing e-commerce websites developed by local companies, but in the summer of 2007, with the help of a SharePoint consultant, decided that SharePoint was finally mature enough to meet its needs.

Throughout this book, we will be using the Wine Company website as our example.