In SharePoint 2010 Shared Service
Providers (SSP's) are replaced by Service Applications. Services are no longer
combined into a SSP. They are running independent as a service application. The
service application architecture is now also built into Microsoft SharePoint
Foundation 2010, in contrast to the Shared Services Provider (SSP) architecture
that was only part of Office SharePoint Server 2007. A key benefit here is that
all services are installed by default and there is no SSP setup.