SharePoint Tip of the Month

July 2009: SharePoint 2010 Sneak Peek and Kevin’s First Thoughts

At the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference last week 8,000 partners from around the globe and 2,000 Microsoft leaders converged on New Orleans to network, exchange ideas and learn about the next wave of Microsoft product innovation. There were the expected jabs at Google and Apple and Oracle, but when one got beyond the enthusiasm for everything Microsoft, it is hard to ignore the spectacular range of product initiatives and business value opportunities these products unlock.

Steve Ballmer (CEO) and Kevin Turner (COO) spoke eloquently about the economic “reset” that has made this a different world for all of us. Numerous product managers provided overviews of Windows 7 and a whole range of 2010 releases including Exchange, Office, and of course SharePoint.

After much speculation but very little concrete information on the topic, there is finally a place to go to learn more about SharePoint 2010. Visit the following link for a “Sneak Peek” including a list of features, screen shots and videos. http://sharepoint.microsoft.com/2010/Sneak_Peek/Pages/default.aspx

Our job – through these SharePoint tips and more direct communication and professional services consulting – is to help you understand what this means for you.

At the Microsoft conference I heard Brad Callahan, Microsoft’s VP for North America Services say this (and I’m paraphrasing): “Customers are either just scratching the surface with SharePoint or their deployments are out of control because there’s a lack of governance.” In last month’s SharePoint tip we talked about how organizations can leverage the true business value of their investment in their SharePoint deployment. This implies that with the current version of SharePoint (MOSS), there is still a very long way to go between current implementation and potential value to be recognized. In this context you should be asking “Why should I care about SharePoint 2010?”

The answer is multi-fold:

 

• SharePoint 2010 represents Microsoft’s continued commitment to SharePoint as an enterprise platform. With $9B+ investment in R&D, Microsoft identifies SharePoint as one of its most important products and the fastest growing in its history.
• SharePoint 2010 is a better, stronger development platform
• SharePoint 2010 has significant improvements for administration
• SharePoint 2010 has a superior user interface and includes a plethora of new and advanced features and functions

But with SharePoint 2010 probably 6-8 or more months away from release, it is not time to sit back and wait. The great news about 2010 is that Microsoft has planned for migration. All indications are that a well planned move from 2007 to 2010 will quell all bad memories for those who suffered through the SharePoint 2003 migration to SharePoint 2007.

You might be interested in what our team members are excited about in SharePoint 2010. Here is a sampling of some initial thoughts:

 

• “The new integration with Visual Studio 2010 will allow us to develop customizations without so much effort around packaging and deploying the solution. The additional developer tools (Developer Dashboard, Linq for SharePoint, Client Object Model, Server Explorer, and other visual aids) will help us write better code in less time.”

 

• “SharePoint Workspace (formerly Groove) allows the user to take site content offline and then re-sync later. This offline ability un-tethers the information worker and allows him or her to truly use SharePoint to do their job. I suspect it will also enable the development and deployment of business applications on SharePoint that require offline access.”

 

• “Business Connectivity Services (BCS) will allow bidirectional access to your data, without bypassing SharePoint’s controls. It is flexible enough (with a little custom code) to map to pretty much any data source. These new capabilities will facilitate the development of more robust back-office systems surfaced through a consistent SharePoint user interface, making it easier to achieve the holy grail of a portal through which all your applications can be reached.”

 

• “The power of the 2010 SharePoint Development tools, coupled with the increased capabilities found in the Business Connectivity Services features greatly increase the viable scope of SharePoint-based app development in the 2010 version. The ability to have read/write connectivity to line of business data, and to expose it all the way down to client side code eliminates the old debate between a SharePoint/List based solution and a pure .NET/SQL based solution. Now we can use the right tools for the job at hand without having to compromise on requirements.”

 

• “SharePoint 2010 provides the ability to select multiple records displayed in a list and perform an action upon them, for instance “Check In”, “Check Out”, “Delete”, etc. This is done by placing a checkbox in the list view and selecting the desired records. In previous versions the ability to perform these types of “mass edit” functions was not available and required the processing of each record on an individual (record by record) basis.”

 

• “The enhanced user interface controls (such as the incorporation of the “ribbon” for easier navigation for common SharePoint actions; web edit for in-line rich text editing on pages; and Silverlight for providing more interactivity between a user and certain content) provide many opportunities to improve the presentation of content to users, improve the way they interact with content, and, therefore, increase user adoption.”

What do you think? Please visit http://sharepoint.microsoft.com/2010/Sneak_Peek/Pages/default.aspx and then let me know what you’re most excited about in SharePoint 2010.