SharePoint is a ready-made platform for organizations to increase productivity by centralizing where people can share and collaborate on data in different formats. It allows storing documents, emails, records and other information in one place. Users can customize SharePoint by changing layouts and adding third party components. Key advantages include out of the box document management features like versioning, permissions and workflows. The six pillars of SharePoint are sites for internal/external websites, communities for collaboration, content management, search capabilities, business intelligence insights and integrating external systems. Authentication in SharePoint can be classic or claims-based using tokens, while authorization uses built-in permission levels.