No, thankfully, not the holiday season…not quite yet. Although I can already sense the thinly repressed urge to dust off the fake snow and tune up the sleigh bells in my neighborhood. But since Steve Ballmer announced the November availability of the Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 public beta at the SharePoint Conference in Las Vegas late last month, the anticipation for this release has just been heightened.
Some have already had the opportunity to evaluate the release in some detail, and are adding to the excitement with extremely positive reviews. Network World’s Mike Heck, for example, has called the release a “Significant improvement over SharePoint 07, providing IT execs with multiple ways to streamline their infrastructure and cut costs.” Ballmer himself has fanned the flames by characterizing the release as: “The biggest and most important release of SharePoint to date,” and by adding that “When paired with Microsoft Office 2010, SharePoint 2010 will transform efficiency by connecting workers across a single collaboration platform for business.”
One of the fastest-growing products in Microsoft’s history, SharePoint is not only gaining share and growing in revenue, it is fast becoming the business collaboration platform of record – helping organizations respond quickly to business needs with an improved developer platform that makes it easier to build rich content and collaboration applications. It also offers enhanced Internet site capabilities that help businesses drive revenue and retain customers on a single platform – while offering choice and flexibility between on-premises and cloud solutions.
As Dynamics ERP’s portal and collaboration infrastructure of choice, there is much for us to look forward to in Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010. Microsoft Dynamics information will be easier to work with in the new Fluent User Interface (Ribbon) – now familiar from the Office 2010 products – take offline through SharePoint Workspace 2010 and External Lists in a SharePoint site, and then automatically synch back to Microsoft Dynamics when SharePoint Workspace is reconnected to the Internet. There will also be a host of features to enable collaboration and co-authoring of projects with colleagues – making changes in parallel and in real time without compromising versioning control – both simplifying process and speeding progress. And for driving collaboration with your business partners through Federated Collaboration via secure SharePoint-based vendor portals. I can understand why so many are eager to get hands-on, and try it for themselves.
So to keep you occupied while waiting those last few days, why not hop over to the SharePoint 2010 Sneak Peek pages on the Microsoft website, sign up for the beta, see some great videos, and get into the festive spirit…
Premature season’s greetings.
Microsoft Dynamics Product Marketing