- Video: Access Services, Try Access Services Online Free, And SharePoint 2010 Virtual Image Download
-
The following is a cross post from a piece originally posted to Social Media Talk.
I am very excited about today's post. No, not because I think my video is something special but because of the link to an exciting new resource for everyone who wants to get their hands wet with SharePoint 2010 and its many features (like Access Services). A big thanks for that goes to Microsoft's Johanna White for passing along the hosting and VHD info.
In this episode of Michael on the Go I review what Access Services is in SharePoint 2010 Enterprise as well as its benefits. Access Services promises to be a real game changer in many organizations with features/functionality that should please not only end users who are looking for the relative ease of application in Access but also operational IT folks looking for centrally management, scalability and more.
Want to ramp up on Access Services as well as on SharePoint 2010? Check out these invaluable resources.
Michael Gannotti is a Technology Specialist for the Microsoft Corporation and the author of the blog SocialMedia Talk. You can also find him on Facebook and Twitter.
Technorati Tags: Microsoft,SharePoint,Office,Access,Gannotti,Technology
- SharePoint Buzz, the Cloud, Competition and Client Centered Growth
-
Ever have one of those
mornings where you find the stars seem to align between the conversations you
have been having, the thoughts bubbling around in your head, and the news front
and center that morning? Well I sure had one this morning around SharePoint
2010, the conversations I have been having with clients around it, the
solutions I can envision it hitting, and the maturity of this integrated system
and it's flexibility in deployment.
Each and every morning
after getting up at 5am and bumbling my way through brewing a pot of coffee I
crank up my PC, coffee in hand, and skim the tech news world. I like to keep on
top of what's happening because the clients I work with each day have a right
to expect that I am up to date on industry direction and trends and have a good
sense as to the value SharePoint can bring to an organization. In many cases
these same organizations are also evaluating alternate platforms and comparing
them to SharePoint and the Office System. With Lotusphere taking place there
has been a number of announcements from IBM coming out about how they are
beginning to bring their offerings to the cloud as well as how they are
enriching their offerings through a number of new add-on modules that customers
can set up and integrate to provide rich robust services. Lots of great news
for IBM customers that got me thinking why SharePoint has been so popular and
why the demand is so high for SharePoint 2010. With thoughts of out of the box
integration, robust platform offering, and more rolling round in my head, as
well as some recent customer conversations, I then stumbled across an eWeek article
that just further drove it all home. The article REVIEW: Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Beta Brings Already
Solid Server into Modern Day, by Jim
Rapoza, lays out in a four page piece why SharePoint 2010 is
such a strong offering for today's Enterprise space. Covering strengths
familiarity and user interface innovation, Office integration and offline
capability, as well as rich management feature set, the author really helps to
lay out the case as to why SharePoint is such a compelling offering. This alone
would have been great news illustrating why SharePoint is exploding in
popularity but then along comes Arpan Shah and a post by him that focuses on
Microsoft SharePoint and the cloud.
Arpan, in his article, SharePoint Online in the 2010 wave, Focuses on
the availability of SharePoint 2010 as a hosted, cloud based service. Unlike
others just now entering the fray with cloud based alternatives for their
collaboration stack Microsoft has a successful track record of hosting it's
collaborative stack in the cloud for large enterprises (such as Coca Cola) and is building on that
success and taking it to whole new levels. As I look at how our competitors are
trying to keep pace in this space, see the buzz building in reviews like REVIEW: Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Beta Brings Already
Solid Server into Modern Day, observe our growth in the cloud
offering market, and talk to customers each day, there are a number points that
seem to coalesce repeatedly. These include steady, real world, customer driven
growth of product offering as well as robust cloud hosting that provides
for the maximum flexibility for customers.
As the author of REVIEW: Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Beta Brings Already
Solid Server into Modern Day mentions SharePoint's origins
really began with modest aspirations around simple document centric
collaboration. With each iteration customers have stretched it's capacity,
provided feedback, and the upcoming SharePoint 2010 reflects a product that is
really a reflection of the collective wants and needs of its user base.
SharePoint 2010 delivers out of the box rich collaboration, records management,
web content management, digital asset management, robust site and portal
creation, web 2.0 social computing, enterprise search, business insight and
intelligence capability, business driven composite application delivery, as
well as a rich development platform that leverages the skills of the largest
installed base of programmers. It does all of this out of the box without
requiring substantial integration services or requiring substantial re-training
of a company's user base. Need robust enterprise forms and process management?
Out of the box. Need deep user friendly business intelligence? Out of the box.
Need records management that can deliver the requirements you have for
compliance? You guessed it, out of the box.
As I present SharePoint
2010 to customers who are facing strapped budgets, the products breadth and
depth of workload offerings is a breath of fresh air for many organizations. IT
can move away from lengthy integration projects and instead focus on delivering
value to their internal clients. Features such as PowerPivot and Access
Services enable developers to focus on the deeper development tasks of an
organization and less time on repetitive departmental development tasks.
Organization such as Coca Cola are finding that the
maturity and robustness of Microsoft's cloud offerings around SharePoint can
help them to save real money while providing the flexibility of hosting
configuration they need. It is great to see the power and value of SharePoint
receiving accolades in the press and even more rewarding to see competitors
lining up as they in turn validate what we have been doing for years as they
attempt to replicate much of what we have been doing all along. In the end the
customers are the ones to benefit not only from the added offerings of this
iteration of SharePoint, from our flexibility in hosting models, as well as
from the increase in competition that spurs our product teams to continue to
listen, and grow the product in ways that meet our client demands and exceed
industry expectations.
In the article REVIEW: Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Beta Brings Already
Solid Server into Modern Day the author states "SharePoint
is arguably the most successful Microsoft product of the last 10 years." I
would take it a step further. When you look at the breadth and depth of what
SharePoint 2010 brings to the table I would go on to say that this upcoming
release is the most significant product release since Windows 95. Windows 95
was a watershed release, a landscape changer. Likewise, SharePoint 2010
provides the integrated capabilities to enable businesses as no other product
has before. The typical response after a SharePoint 2010 briefing with a client
is some variation of "WOW!" There is just so much, from a single product, that
meets so much pent up business Intranet/Extranet/Internet needs that clients
want to get started right away.
If you have not taken a
look yet at SharePoint 2010 to see what it has to offer you should. You can
learn more about it as well as download the beta version of the product below.
If you are struggling with operational costs/challenges check out how Microsoft
can host your environment for you. Then be sure check out some of the buzz out
there on the Internet around SharePoint and what it can do.
SharePoint 2010 Beta Download and Information
Learn about SharePoint 2010 Hosting from Microsoft
Read REVIEW: Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Beta Brings Already
Solid Server into Modern Day
Well time for me to get
back work. Have another client presentation to prepare for on SharePoint 2010...
What else ;-)
Michael Gannotti is a Technology Specialist for the
Microsoft Corporation and the author of the blog SocialMedia Talk. You
can also find him on Facebook and Twitter.
- Welcome from Yung Chou
-
This is Yung Chou and I am an IT Evangelist in Microsoft Developer and Platform Evangelism team. Having been with Microsoft for quite a while, I previously had a number of roles including technical account management, service deliveries, and technical sales. Much of my time, I spend meeting with IT professionals in events, conferences, and communities and sharing Microsoft visions, discussing technologies, and presenting solutions.
I am very excited to have the opportunity to join the community here and hope to bring some values into the discussions on Office integration, SharePoint Workspace, and SharePoint infrastructure in general. In addition to this site, my online presence also includes: my personal blog, TechNet Edge, and Windows Server Expert Blogs.
- SharePoint, BBQ, and Community
-
The other night Joel Oleson and his family were in town at the conclusion of a family vacation so he, his family, and some of us local SharePointers as well as some of our family members got together for some southern barbeque for dinner. It was a low key, informal hangout kind of night but it really got me thinking about one of the most unique aspects of SharePoint that truly sets it, and SharePoint enthusiasts apart, and that is the incredibly strong, people oriented community.
Way back when I first got involved with SharePoint (when they were coming up with the first beta code named of Tahoe) the whole premise of the product was to create a central location for people to share ideas and information. Over the years as the technology has advanced, its usage skyrocketed, the products ability to connect, to facilitate socialization, has also increased. Along the way though that concept of socialization, of connecting people and not simply interchanging data has crossed over from the virtual world of corporate work in to the very fabric countless folks lives.
Following the 2003 release I remember thinking how it would be nice to start a local SharePoint group to provide some networking and regular updates. With the generosity of Arpan Shah from the SharePoint team I got some money so that we could provide some give-away prizes at our monthly meetings as well as provide pizza and soda. I remember thinking it would be nice to get 20-30 folks together monthly. I was overwhelmed, and humbled when we started to have to reserve the two connecting presentation rooms in the Malvern PA office, open the dividers as we were packing both rooms with folks standing around the edges as well. The best thing I remember was that while we all ostensibly showed up initially for the technology, it soon became apparent that folks mainly started coming to see each other. Friendships were being formed, talk after presentations quickly shifted to hobbies, families, folks planning to get together. Real community was being formed and not just a user group.
In the years since those early days I relocated to the south, and have seen the technology continue to advance and increase it's impact at customers. As great as those advances have been they real pale in comparison to what I truly feel is the primary reason for SharePoint's phenomenal success, the people. User groups are everywhere. Organizations like the ISPA, SharePoint Saturday, and more are everywhere. The reason for their success is so very evident whenever you attend any of the SharePoint organization or user group events, it's the people. You have folks like Muhanad Omar who, along with a number of other super folks, tirelessly give of themselves to help other in the Middle East set up and build community. Folks like Bob Fox and Michael Lotter who have built what have become worldwide organizations that exist to help folks connect and improve themselves. Tireless volunteers who give of themselves traveling, presenting, simply to help the larger community. Folks like Susan Lennon, Josh Carlisle, Laura Rogers, Becky Isserman, Dan Usher, Rick Taylor, Dux Raymond, Heather Waterman and so many more I could fill pages. Then to top of off all the folks worldwide who bring the type of events that many of their local community cannot attend. Folks like Jose Antonio Morales, Agnes Molner, and again countless others worldwide. Best of all, just like I saw in those early days when you attend these type of events sure you get the networking, information exchanges that are so beneficial professionally, but more importantly the post presentation conversations once again turn to family, hobbies and such. Friendships are forged and the real sharing of these "Share"Point events takes place.
As a former school teacher and social worker one of the driving factors in me climbing aboard the SharePoint bandwagon more than 10 years ago was the promise of inclusiveness, of a place where everyone could participate and exchange ideas on even footing. Prior to that technology was in many ways a secret mojo bag held by IT folks and doled out as was thought necessary. The ability to participate through technology in idea interchanges was limited to those with the technical wherewithal. Growing up in a Connecticut community where they held town hall meetings that allowed access and decision making rights with full transparency to everything (you should have seen yearly meetings pouring over every last expenditure down to pencils) that type of exclusivity always rubbed me the wrong way. In many ways SharePoint represented to me the ideal of democratizing information exchange and the bringing together of people in community irrespective of their title or their technical skills. We didn't have buzz words like social computing and social media yet but we were setting out on a journey of technology helping to facilitate the basic needs of people to socialize and be heard, and have the opportunity to impact their environment.
All that brings me back to this week. Just a few folks and family members getting together for some good food, and good company. In the normal course of life it is doubtful any of us would have met but through the incredible worldwide community built around SharePoint we have. Sure we discussed SharePoint a bit, mostly around. how to better support and develop the community further ;-), but for the most part we talked about our kids and families, shared stories about growing up. One of Joel's sons shared with me his passion for stop motion video making (the kids has some serious talent!) We all got a kick out of the babies there. All in all it was more like the "social networking" I did as a kid where every Sunday we all gathered at Grandpa Gannotti's house for spaghetti and meatballs. Wednesday night we met, we broke read, and relaxed. Its that kind of connecting that makes SharePoint so special to me.
If you are not plugged in to a local SharePoint Community/User Group you should be! If you haven't attended a SharePoint Saturday, you NEED to. Get plugged in and you will find it a ride worth taking. As for me it was suggested at the conclusion of our dinner that we should do this once a month. Just have an informal get together for dinner, families welcome, where we just eat and hang out. I couldn't agree more. I think I am really starting to get the Point of SharePoint (at least the most important one ;-)
Check out:
- Oh How Far We Have Come: SharePoint Decade Reflections and Contrast
-
As we approach the end of the year it is customary for people to take stock of the year and reflect back on what has transpired. Certainly in the realm of SharePoint and the Office System there is much to reflect upon. This past year we have seen the explosion of a vibrant SharePoint community worldwide built upon the enthusiasm for the SharePoint 2007 product set. We have seen SharePoint 2007 launch an incredible wealth of solutions as ISVs continue to find new, innovative, uses for the functionality of SharePoint. Perhaps the crowning moment this past year occurred when 7,500 SharePoint faithful converged on Las Vegas for the SharePoint Conference for the unveiling of SharePoint 2010. What an incredible event and what an incredible response to the richest offering of capabilities yet. I could spend a lot of time reflecting on all of these areas. They all deserve attention and reflection. However, with approaching 2101 and a new decade I thought instead I might reach back a little further.
Though it launched in 2001 as a Corporate Systems Architect at a large financial services organization I became involved with a Microsoft program in 1999/2000 called Tahoe (which became SharePoint. Today when we look at the capabilities of SharePoint in 2010 we discuss its broad Platform/Infrastructure capabilities around delivering Sites, Communities, Content, Search, Insights, and Composites. Within each of these areas are an array of capabilities that we could literally spend hours discussing. The breadth and depth of SharePoint 2010 is staggering which helps explain why it has become, and here is where I get to roll out my favorite tongue twister, the most prolific portal product on the planet today. ;-) In 2001 though the first release of SharePoint was much more modest in its offering. Focusing on web based document centric collaboration, search, and portal capabilities, SharePoint sought to bring the emerging power of web based productivity to the masses for the first time. Before that I can remember my own frustration with web products. The darlings of of many of us geeky types, they forced end users to come to IT for almost everything. It was as if IT held some special bag of mojo that was doled out according to the judgment of folks who did not own the content or the processes involved. As a result we saw rogue file shares, PCs serving as pseudo Intranets under someone's desk, and more popping up. Tahoe/SharePoint sought to change all that. Based on the simple premise that users knew how to use a browser and Microsoft Office, SharePoint sought to put the productivity and creative force in the hands of end users. It got me so excited in its focus that I applied to work at Microsoft and well, have been working with it ever since.
To help put a little perspective on where SharePoint has been this past decade and to contrast it with where it is going I thought I would share a little blast from the past. Back in 2002, while I worked out of the Microsoft Malvern office, our district Marketing folks and I worked to create a lead in informational CD to help drive awareness and promote some ongoing events around SharePoint we were putting on. I made the CD using Microsoft Producer for PowerPoint, a free add-on for creating Web based and CD based content (I miss that application!) While cleaning out my office I ran across a copy of it and have used Microsoft Expression Encoder to grab a screen cast of it for your viewing below. Watching it I was amazed at some of the capabilities we were able to accomplish easily with no coding even back then. Watch "Empowering Employees with Microsoft Office XP and SharePoint 2001" then head on over to the the SharePoint 2010 site where you can get a taste of the upcoming version to see just how far we have come.
*This video is best viewed in full screen mode. You can enlarge it by mousing over the video and selecting the expand symbol in the lower right corner of the video.
To learn more about SharePoint 2010 and to see how far SharePoint has come check out:
Michael Gannotti is a Technology Specialist for the Microsoft Corporation and the author of the blog SocialMedia Talk. You can also find him on Facebook and Twitter.
- Got Enterprise? Get Prepared! Quick Resources To Prep For Upgrading To SharePoint 2010
-
I was perusing the web today when I came across a great article on a SharePoint rollout titled "IT manager explains groundwork strategy for major SharePoint rollout." The article did a great job walking the reader through the preparation and steps taken by a Microsoft customer to prepare themselves for SharePoint 2010. It is always great to see what other customers are doing in real life usage and this was one such example. For large Enterprise shops though the story and processes by necessity are much more involved. Thankfully though there is already a wealth of content and resources to help even the largest organizations prepare for the move to SharePoint 2010.
The first stop for any organization looking to prepare themselves for SharePoint 2010 should be the Microsoft SharePoint Server section on TechNet. There readers will find a wealth of documentation around SharePoint 2010 including: General question and answers and discussion; Setup, upgrade, administration and operation; SharePoint product group information; SharePoint IT pro documentation team. For those looking to specifically at what it will take to upgrade there are great article around requirements as well as Preparing to upgrade to SharePoint 2010 Products.
While information is great nothing quite beats working with folks who have been trained directly on the process. With that in mind if you are looking at how you and your organization can prepare for SharePoint 2010 then why not talk directly to your local Microsoft resources? If you are at an Enterprise customer then you have resources available from Microsoft who are ready, willing, and able to start the conversations and planning with you to prepare you to upgrade. It is an activity that I am engaged in on a regular basis. You might also want to look at Microsoft partners in your area. Many partners have already begun working and training on SharePoint 2010. Don't know where to look for local partners? Again, talk to your local Microsoft team. You might also want to get plugged in to a local SharePoint User Group or attend a SharePoint Saturday event. At both you will have the opportunity to interact with your peers, see what they are doing, as well as meet local Microsoft partners who are actively assisting customers in your area.
Migration and management tools are the final area I wanted to quickly highlight. In the large Enterprise space organizations typically employ Enterprise grade management tools to handle the operational aspects of managing their SharePoint environment. The article highlighted the use of Quest tools for the management of the cited clients environment. Management tools can be big help not only in upgrade prep and ongoing management but can even lower the workload around site migration. There are a wealth of Microsoft partners producing fine tools around SharePoint management but three of the most notable include: Quest Software, AvePoint, and Metalogix. All three of these vendors have robust offerings to help with the day to day management of an Enterprise SharePoint environment as well as assist with migration to SharePoint 2010. If you are in a large organization and are looking for help, tool wise, in managing and migrating your SharePoint environment then you owe it to yourself to look in to such a solution set.
SharePoint 2010 is prompting lots of buzz and customers are already itching to upgrade. In order to prepare for the move be sure you and your organization are keeping up to date with the latest information for migration available on the Microsoft SharePoint Server section on TechNet. Get plugged in to your local account team, local partners and SharePoint user groups, and attend a SharePoint Saturday event. Finally, if you need assistance with a robust management and migration toolset check out some of the fabulous offerings by one of Microsoft's premiere partners. The SharePoint team has worked hard to ensure that the roadblocks to migration have been greatly reduced in this upcoming iteration of SharePoint. Get informed, get plugged in, and be ready to roll out SharePoint 2010 to your organization in a timely manner and be an IT hero. :-)
Michael Gannotti is a Technology Specialist for the Microsoft Corporation and the author of the blog SocialMedia Talk. You can also find him on Twitter at @gannotti and on Facebook here.
- SharePoint 2010 and Office 2010 Betas are Now Available
-
Some exciting news was
announced this morning at the Professional Developer's Conference in Los
Angeles: You can get started exploring SharePoint 2010 and Office 2010 by
downloading the beta trials from microsoft.com/2010. SharePoint
2010-together with Office 2010 and other related products-ties together your
PC, browser, and mobile device to offer the premier productivity experience.
In fact, I'm blogging
to you right now from the SharePoint booth at PDC 2009, where I'm helping
developers see what they can do with the new SharePoint tools. We've
announced dramatic innovations that make it easy to build new solutions with
SharePoint 2010; see them for yourself and participate in the beta by downloading
the new versions of SharePoint 2010, Office 2010, Visio 2010
and Project 2010.
Some of the new
features you'll want to explore include the ability to design workflow in Visio
2010 and the interface for surfacing your application's features with the new
Ribbon. If you're a developer working with SharePoint 2010, you can install the
SharePoint Foundation Server 2010 on your Windows 7 machine and develop against
it using new Visual Studio 2010 project templates. These templates make it much
easier to create compelling new solutions and package them up for simpler
deployment, such as the new visual web part.
We're also giving you
easy new ways to connect with your social network. The Outlook Social
Connector lets you connect with people on Windows Live, LinkedIn, Facebook and
Twitter. There's even an SDK for developers that makes it possible to
extend and customize code and enable great new scenarios for building connected
applications.
Combining Sharepoint and Office 2010 lets users
communicate in real time through Outlook, not to mention share/edit Excel, Word
and other Office documents simultaneously. And that's just one example of how
combining these tools will help drive greater efficiency. To dive deeper,
visit microsoft.com/2010
- Google Sites vs SharePoint - Like Comparing Pencil & Paper to a PC
-
Good morning everyone! So here I am down in Charlotte, North Carolina getting ready
to give a presentation around SharePoint as a development platform and doing
some catch up with my email. One email caught my eye and has me bouncing
around, so while my blood is pumping I thought I should write this up before I
forget. There are a lot of articles out there (sometimes well meaning ones at
that) which paint SharePoint in a distorted picture due to the lack of
understanding around all that it offers and the flexibility it provides users.
To those unfamiliar with its full capability and flexibility in choice reading
such pieces can leave a skewed impression that is in fact not reflective of the
full platform. With that in mind I decided with an hour to kill I needed to
jump on this, so here we go!
Yesterday
an interesting article was sent to me that called out what on the surface
appears to be a strong challenge presented by Google to Microsoft's SharePoint
Platform. The article titled "Google Sites Offers Templates; Claims It's
Easier Than Sharepoint" highlights upgrades to the Google Sites
platform that it cites as evidence that "Google Sites is making a clear
strike against Microsoft which requires a certain level of technical skill to
create a Sharepoint site." Citing improvements in page layouts, gadgets,
template saving, as well a what is termed a web-centric approach vs
document-centric one, the article tries to make the case for Google Sites
presenting a challenge to the SharePoint platform while admitting that
"Most organizations work in a document centric environment." Overall
I found in the article that the author tried to present a balanced view of the
two platforms, but if one really takes an in-depth look at what both platforms
have to offer it becomes readily apparent that there really is no comparison
between the two when looking at the needs of Enterprise customers. With that in
mind I would like to point out some of the key differences and ways in which
comparing the SharePoint platform to Google Sites is really like comparing a
pen and paper to a fresh, fully loaded computer. Sure they both provide a
platform for writing notes and ideas but that is where the semblance ends.
With
Google Sites the article "Google Sites Offers Templates; Claims It's
Easier Than Sharepoint" points out that users can easily
assemble pages, add gadgets to pages, save pages as templates and that as
web-centric platform its pundits claim that it is superior in providing links
to pages vs providing documents. With that in mind lets take a look at how the
SharePoint platform also provides the same functionality with superior
Enterprise capability while also offering document-centric capability where the
business deems appropriate. Then let us also take a look at how SharePoint
moves beyond such baseline activity and delivers a rich capability far beyond
that and how this really extends the experience with the SharePoint 2010
release.
Microsoft
Office SharePoint Server is a web based collaboration platform rooted in
facilitating collaboration between users based on the predication that they
know how to either use Microsoft Office, a web browser, or both, but nothing
else. It is true that out of the box SharePoint provides rich, seamless,
integration for users of Microsoft Office. Using the tools they are most familiar
with Office, users can publish slides to slide libraries, publish blog entries
using Microsoft Word, publish and share data focused information with Excel,
and more. Now to some Google Sites pundits this is something they point out as
a so-called shortcoming. There are those, according to the article, who would
say that creating content natively as a web page is better and links to pages
is better than accessing documents via a folder structure. Really? Better for
who? If users are accustomed to working within a folder file structure, then
shouldn't a platform designed to better support these individuals not force
them to completely rework how they produce content and interact? That is
exactly what SharePoint does and is the reason that it has become the fastest
growing product in Microsoft's history.
Beyond
that though SharePoint does in fact provide a rich environment for creating
native web content that resides as pages and links. Out of the box SharePoint
provides an integrated wiki platform where users can create content like FAQs
and other entities utilizing wiki markup language and simple rich text editing
capabilities. SharePoint also provides a robust blogging platform out of the
box (my own blog SocialMedia Talk in fact runs on SharePoint). Web based
surveys, threaded discussion boards, calendars, task lists, issues lists,
project task lists with Gantt charting are all out of the box. Additionally
SharePoint provides a range of web page templates for assembling dashboards of
web parts, creating content pages and more, with the ability to create custom
ones that are in turn saved as templates. Sound familiar? And all of this is
done on a platform that integrates with Enterprise security, provides robust
auditing and compliance capabilities and sits atop an Enterprise workflow
engine. SharePoint does in fact provide a rich we-centric environment. The
difference is in the SharePoint platform business users are given a choice to
work and interact with content in the manner that makes most sense for them and
their users. SharePoint doesn't try and shove the round peg in a square hole.
SharePoint
doesn't stop though with just simple content interaction and production.
SharePoint truly is a business enablement platform. Microsoft understands that
business users have a need to access and manipulate data as well as content.
Through services such as the Business Data Catalog, Excel Services, InfoPath
Services, and Performance Point Services SharePoint provides users avenues to
leverage their existing skill sets to deliver rich web based content and
services. With the Business Data Catalog users can readily place Business Data
Web Parts on web pages that expose business critical data from backend systems
and they can do so without being a code junkie, but just an everyday Office
user. Excel services allow users of Excel to tie rich data and charting
capability for dynamic data, publish a spreadsheet to SharePoint, and then
provide a <gasp> dynamic, interactive web
page that delivers a rich view of that Excel content viewable by a browser.
InfoPath leverages the skills of Microsoft Word users to create forms and
outputs XML forms that are published to SharePoint, are accessed via a browser
as a.. <you guessed it> web page.
With the inclusion of Performance Point Server corporations now have high end
business intelligence capabilities integrated into SharePoint, delivered via
web pages, and made accessible to the masses within an organization. Such
application delivery in the past was prohibitively expensive for all but a few
corporate users but now is made user friendly and available for everyone. These
are areas that Google Sites can't even begin to touch.
But
wait Michael, isn't there this little thing called SharePoint 2010 on the
horizon? Does it bring anything else to the table? Absolutely!!
With
SharePoint/Office 2010 Microsoft is introducing the Office Web applications.
These are delivered Windows SharePoint Foundation Server or SharePoint
Server.With Office Web Applications users can again use of their familiar tools
to create rich content which they can publish to SharePoint. The difference is
now when they create Word docs, PowerPoint slide decks, Excel spreadsheets,
OneNote books, these same "documents" are viewable as web pages (note they can be viewed through the browser as a web page but are
in fact documents published in the Open XML format). Not only that, they are
also editable through the web interface as well given end users the freedom of
choice in how they want to interact with the content. SharePoint 2010 also
delivers integrated digital assets management, enhancements to blogs and wikis,
and more, as well as full offline capability for all content, whether
web-centric or document-centric, via the new addition to Microsoft Office,
SharePoint Workplace. SharePoint is also ramping things up in the insight and
composite applications space with Power Pivot, Access Services, Visio Services,
Business Connectivity Services, and much more. Finally, if you want to have
SharePoint provided for as a SaaS offering that is also available from
Microsoft through Microsoft Online Services.
Google
is doing some interesting things with its Sites and apps. To try though and
compare those capabilities with SharePoint really misses the boat. While fine
for casual, simplistic content needs the Sites platform is limited at best.
With Microsoft SharePoint though, customers have a true Enterprise enablement set
of tools that provide the best of web-centric and document-centric flexibility.
There is a reason that SharePoint's growth has been meteoric. It provides the
best, most comprehensive and flexible platform for today's business user.
If
want you want to learn more about SharePoint, and some of the integrated
services mentioned here be sure to check out the following sites:
Technorati Tags: Microsoft,Google,SharePoint,Gannotti,Technology
- Hot-Off-The-Press: Web Analytics With SharePoint Whitepaper!
-
That one of the Big 5 Consulting firms reported that there’s a first mover advantage when it comes to embracing Digital Marketing, it comes as no surprise that the Web Content Management (WCM) software market has kept growing despite the economic meltdown. In fact, analysts have reported that the 2008 Digital Marketing (including advertising) spend amounted to $74B and is expected to reach $160B by 2013. Thus, you are likely one of those who have embraced the Digital Marketing wave by investing in WCM software to attract more prospects and increase customer loyalty by transforming your web presence, to reduce your cost of sale and develop new revenue streams by monetizing your products, services and content through ads or subscriptions, or yet to cut T&E by substituting in-person for virtual collaboration. But how good is that investment really? And what return on marketing investment (ROMI) are you really getting out of it?
Those questions can be addressed, in part or in full, through Web Analytics solutions and that’s precisely the goal of the following whitepaper, which explains how to address your web analytics needs with SharePoint. It is based on SharePoint 2007 because many customers are going to be leveraging that version for a bit more time, as they wait for SharePoint 2010’s global availability or depending on their internal IT roadmap. This whitepaper addresses a wide variety of customers' Web Analytics needs---whether they want to use SharePoint's Web Analytics capabilities Out-Of-The-Box, whether they have very specific needs requiring custom development on top of SharePoint (it is a platform, after all), or whether they want to leverage 3rd party Web Analytics solutions that they already possess or subscribed to. Expect to see a SharePoint 2010 equivalent of this whitepaper in the future. If you like the whitepaper, rate this post.
Take Care,
Jean-Paul
- SharePoint Conference 2009 Favorite Technologies Unveiled
-
Well it's official, the cake is baked and the conference done. so to speak. SharePoint Conference 2009 was the coming out party for SharePoint 2010 and featured some incredible content. The conference introduced the new SharePoint workloads, new features, and plenty of time to network with experts and peers. As an attendee I was able to soak a lot in, though not all of it. This upcoming release in incredible in it's scope and trying to take it all in over a week would be like trying to take a sip of water from a fire hose running full tilt. In my last post, Announcing SharePoint 2010, I introduced some of the basics of SharePoint at a high level. In this post I would like to introduce you to my personal top four technologies unveiled at the conference. With new Enterprise feature sets, code availability, as well as personal interaction, SharePoint Conference 2009 was a phenomenal event. I now have my own SharePoint 2010 site running internally here at Microsoft so in subsequent weeks I will be providing video content demonstrating some of my favorites listed here and more.
The conference saw a number of major additions to the SharePoint product and these were my personal favorites.
1. SQL Power Pivot:
SQL Power Pivot is a two part technology with provisions for client side work as well as server side. On the client side Power Pivot for Excel 2010 introduces column level compression. This compression enables the business user to handle extremely large volumes of data previously unheard of in Excel (think along the line of 101,000,000 plus rows of data!). New features such as slicers and enhanced visualization components then allow the user to create incredibly powerful data driven applications using their existing Excel skill sets. If this was all that Power Pivot provided it would be an incredible story. The magic of Power Pivot really happens though when you publish your work to SharePoint. Workbooks published to SharePoint become full blown Analysis Services applications with all of the management goodness, and data re-usability you get with Analysis Services. Clients only need a browser to then view and interact with your published Power Pivot. I have been showing this technology for some time to clients (under its previous code name of Gemini). Those who have seen it in action have been positively blown away by its power to transform and enable line of business. With so many companies heavily dependent today on Excel in running lines of business this new feature set promises to take things to a new level of power and productivity that quite frankly is beyond what most Excel jockeys ever envisioned Excel and SharePoint to be capable of.
You can learn more about PowerPivot via the links below:
2. Access Services:
As a former corporate systems architect for the 2nd largest mutual fund company in the world Microsoft Access was the bane of my existence. Whenever IT was perceived as too slow to respond to a groups request for a data centric application invariably the group would create an Access data base in response. While I understood the need to move forward with business and "get the job done" unfortunately it often meant that these one off data bases were built on a shared drive and not properly managed. Sooner or later though their use would surface when the cry of "HELP!" went out when the data base was accidently deleted. What has been needed for years was a way in which business units could create rich, data base applications that meet their business requirements, leverage their existing skill sets, but are centrally managed and backed up. Enter Access Services. Access Services offers the best of both worlds for user generated applications with centralized IT management and oversight.
One of the new features in SharePoint 2010 that Access services takes full advantage of is relational lists. SharePoint 2010 lists are fully relational which means that when a user creates an Access 2010 Database and then publishes it to SharePoint 2010 all the Access 2010 tables become SharePoint lists that maintain their relational aspects. Furthermore, logic written in the application becomes SharePoint 2010 workflow and all those Access 2010 forms become ASP.NET pages in SharePoint. All of this without a stitch of code! Lastly, all the data now resides online within SharePoint with the Access client only services as a data manipulation and reporting tool as well as an offline viewing tool. Again as in Power Pivot clients only need a browser to access and work with the published application.
Learn more about Microsoft Access Services for SharePoint Enterprise via the links below:
3. Visio Services:
So, You are looking for rich visualizations of internal data and process but don't want to represent them as tabular data (ie. Excel. Access, etc.). Meet your new best friend, Visio Services. With Visio 2010 I can create rich interactive Visio diagrams that are tied to dynamic data and process. Once you have created the desired visual monitoring application in Visio 2010 you can then publish it to SharePoint Enterprise Visio Services where that application is viewable by anyone with a browser and proper access rights.
While that sounds great Visio 2010 partners with SharePoint 2010 on another little magic trick. Returning to my architect years I can recall many a day crafting a visual representation of an application workflow for clients or even receiving one from those same clients. With the latest version of Visio you will be able to create a workflow in Visio 2010, publish it to SharePoint 2010 and then BAM! The workflow is live!!. Not only that but in SharePoint 2010 workflows created by either Visio 2010 or SharePoint Designer 2010 are now portable. That means if someone creates a workflow that IT sees and thinks, "hmmmm sure would be nice to grab that workflow, tweak and generalize it, they can can. Both Visio 2010 or SharePoint Designer 2010 workflow can be in turn exported as WSP and handed off to a Visual Studio 2010 developer.
Additional Information on Visio 2010 and Visio Surfaces can be found below:
4. Rich Media Management And Streaming:
On the last day of the conference I attended a session on media management and streaming with every expectation that SharePoint 2010 would be delivering some basic capability in this capacity but I was unprepared for what I saw. What I saw showcased absolutely took my breath away as SharePoint 2010 was shown to be a rich media portal platform that accommodated for both on demand content as well as integration with Windows Media Services live/scheduled multicasting. SharePoint 2010 introduces new libraries specifically designed to accommodate rich media files. The introduction of remote blob storage means that media files can be stored on, and streamed from, cheaper file system storage. There is even a SharePoint Media Player based on Silverlight 3.0 which can be easily dropped on any page and pointed to SharePoint content. The player itself is fully modifiable and extensible allowing you to also utilize it to potentially point it to Windows Media Services multicast content.
Want to see this technology in action? Then head on over to the SharePoint 2010 website (which is running presently in the Beta 1, that's right beta 1, version of SharePoint 2010. There you can see a series videos interspersed throughout the various areas of the site. Example: Learn about the top features in SharePoint Insights here.
Take the time to poke around the links I have provided and I think the more you see the more you will agree that this upcoming release of SharePoint is going to absolutely shake up the web world. I have to get going for now as my real job, and clients are calling. Throughout the week I will be posting videos to my personal blog that consist of interviews I conducted from the conference. This next week I will also begin to publish deeper content around individual areas of focus with the new SharePoint 2010 here that will include video demonstrations. So for now I just have one question.. Are you starting to get the point, the SharePoint?! ;-) Ciao
Michael
Michael Gannotti is a SharePoint Technology Specialist for the Microsoft Corporation and the author of SocialMedia Talk with Michael Gannotti
- Announcing SharePoint 2010
-
Okay
folks, Mikey is doing the happy dance today with the much anticipated unveiling
of SharePoint 2010 here at the SharePoint Conference 2009. Anyone who knows me
knows how excited about SharePoint I can get as an Enterprise Enablement platform.
However, as excited as I have been in the past this coming version has me
positively jumping. With each release of SharePoint we have witnessed a steady
growth in the capabilities of the product as it has grown to embrace major
enterprise workloads such as collaboration, portal delivery, search, content
management, business process and forms, as well as business intelligence. As
big as that growth has been though it pales in comparison to the advances in
this iteration.
SharePoint 2010 is absolutely the
biggest most important release of SharePoint to date and in the opinion of this
techie the single most important product release since Windows 95! Think I have
drank a little too much of the Kool-Aid? Well consider how this rev of
SharePoint addresses connecting and empowering people, cutting costs through a
unified infrastructure, as well as providing a platform that facilitates a
rapid response to business needs. Need more convincing after reading this post?
Then be sure to check out "What makes Microsoft SharePoint tick?" by Mary Jo Foley. After
that if you are still wondering what all the fuss is about why not check out these three videos by the SharePoint team that provide an overview of
SharePoint 2010, as well as focuses for the IT Pro and Developer. Once you are
sufficiently salivating then be sure to pre-register for the SharePoint 2010 beta here!!
Connecting and Empowering
People:
For years Microsoft struggled with
how to introduce new features in to its Office products and make them easy to
access. With each release as more features were added they were increasingly
buried within an application menu system that was great for a limited set of
features but which struggled to surface capabilities to users. After years of
intense research and usability testing Microsoft introduced the Ribbon, a
contextual user interface, which surfaces features and functions depending upon
the activity the user is engaged in. With this release of SharePoint the Ribbon
comes to SharePoint as well. "So what Michael, what does that even mean?"
you might ask. Simply put it now means that end users will have a common
experience across all the Office System application whether desktop client or
browser based. It will simplify the access to features that would be beneficial
to users and administrators that might otherwise not be so obvious.
Furthermore, it means that training and the user learning curve will be reduced
across the Office System stack. Learn how to interact with one Office System
product and you will know how to interact with all of them, including
SharePoint. Reduction in the learning curve means broader adoption and a
quicker ramp up to productivity.
With the advent
SharePoint 2007 adoption and use of the product really skyrocketed. People
started using it to collaborate in storing documents in libraries and data in
lists. Once all that information made its way to SharePoint though the
inevitable question arose, "how do I take my data with me offline?"
Enter the latest edition to the Office Pro Plus line-up, SharePoint Workspace.
SharePoint Workspace is the revamped Groove product that enabled rich, secure,
peer to peer collaboration for workers on the go. With it's genesis in the
security realm SharePoint Workspace now allows you to take all your SharePoint
content with you permitting anywhere anytime access to the data you need to get
your job done. Need to proxy out content from your SharePoint Intranet
environment to a client or partner but don't want to extend direct access to
them. No problem. You can provide them with a non-time bombed copy that will
give them perpetual access to your workspace/content you invite them to at no
charge. SharePoint Workspace is the definitive bridge between hosted
applications and disconnected access.
Smart Phone use and
capabilities have exploded since the release of SharePoint 2007. While
SharePoint 2007 offered basic mobile access to its content the new version has
kicked it up a whole notch... and then some. Keeping in mind the new 3 screen
vision at Microsoft for applications (browser based, mobile device, and PC)
this version of SharePoint out of the box will bring a smile to mobile workers
faces. Users will get a rich view of content within SharePoint via their smart
phone browser access. Additionally, they will be able to edit content directly
from those same devices if they have the appropriate permissions. Mobile access
is all the rage now and this version of SharePoint delivers it in spades... out
of the box!
With new features
like personal password management, Office web applications, enhanced Web 2.0
features and more, SharePoint 2010 delivers the richest possible experience in
reaching across the firewall to connect with partners and customers. Now your
internal content creators can set aside concerns about HTML, PHP, and the like.
They can confidently produce documentation in Office, publish it to SharePoint
and know that their intended consumers of that content will be able to open it,
and if they have appropriate permissions, even edit the content, all from a web
browser. Those users on a PC with Internet Explorer? Check! They can
access/interact with the content. Are they running a Mac with Safari? Check...
and ditto! Running a Linux box with Firefox? Check again! :-) SharePoint can
now extend the reach of its content, including Office created documents to
everyone while retaining the high fidelity quality that users expect.
Cut Costs with a Unified
Infrastructure:
Web 2.0 applications are all the
rage now. Different apps delivering different capabilities aim to tackle
blogging, wikis, discussion boards, document management, and more all try to
deliver great "best of breed" experiences. Trying to implement a
hodge podge of applications in a piecemeal fashion presents a number of
challenges to any Enterprise implementation. Today's corporate IT operations
groups know that the real cost of any software is not in the up front purchase
but in the subsequent maintenance and integration of those applications.
SharePoint 2010 squarely meets the needs of today's Enterprise.
Out of the box
SharePoint 2010 delivers a seamless integrated offering that addresses
corporate needs around collaboration, search, BI, content management, social
computing, and more. By providing a comprehensive integrated platform
SharePoint can dramatically lower operational maintenance costs while
delivering real business value across all those workloads. Backup and recovery,
governance, development, help desk support. All these areas would need to be
addressed on a one off application by application instance if organizations opt
to go with so called "best of breed" applications. By climbing aboard
the SharePoint train organizations can focus on their core vertical areas
(manufacturing, financial services, etc.) while delivering world class
functionality across all the varied workloads covered by SharePoint.
Training has a direct
result against deployment and usage of any system in an Enterprise environment.
By simplifying and unifying the user interface in SharePoint with that of the
Office desktop clients SharePoint 2010 has lowered the learning curve for
adoption. Additionally, Microsoft has enabled many core internal training
scenarios within SharePoint itself. The introduction of streaming media within
SharePoint now natively enables scenarios such as application screencasting.
Value add releases such as Productivity Hub provide a platform and content for
training around SharePoint and Office.
In this economic
climate many IT shops are hard-pressed for hardware costs as well as
operational costs. With SharePoint's latest release Microsoft delivers
the ultimate in flexibility for deployment. With hosted services available in
standard and dedicated configurations organizations can now choose to host all
or part of their SharePoint environment internally or externally on Microsoft
infrastructure. Want to initially stand up a SharePoint instance on Microsoft
infrastructure and then move to an internally hosted model down the road? No
problem. Microsoft can readily accommodate you SharePoint hosting needs.
Rapidly Respond to Business
Needs:
As the importance of corporate
websites increases, whether internally or externally focused, SharePoint 2010
delivers an enhanced integration experience through through a number of
business ready mechanisms, not just via lengthy development engagements. With
the revamped Excel Services coupled with Gemini Excel is now a world class data
aggregator and visualization tool capable of handling more than a 100,000,000
rows of data! Your organizations Excel jockeys will have the power to deliver
rich dynamic data to the organization via SharePoint 2010. Has your
organization struggled with managing the proliferation of Access database
applications that in many cases have become mission critical? Enter Access
Services in SharePoint 2010 to harness the creative power of Access to create
departmental applications while now doing so in a manner which is centralized,
backed up and managed. Want to visualize dynamic process within your
organization? Enter Visio Services. Now you can link Visio 2010 to dynamic data
and process, publish it to SharePoint 2010, and content consumers can see live,
interactive, visualizations delivered courtesy of Visio Services. Want to link
SharePoint 2010 data columns to real business data? Now you can with Business
Connectivity Services (formerly the Business Data Catalog). SharePoint Business
Connectivity Services can also be bidirectional which means you can write data
to other applications from within SharePoint 2010 lists!
With a full range of
web services and integration capabilities (I haven't even brushed across Visual
Studio 2010, SharePoint Designer 2010, Silverlight, XRM, and more...)
SharePoint can deliver an integrated organizational experience as no other
platform can. By placing extremely powerful, and managed, tools in the hands of
business SharePoint 2010 free up an organizations development resources to
focus on deeper development tasks. By virtue of its deep integration with
Visual Studio 2010 SharePoint 2010 also serves as the pre-eminent platform for
developing integration interfaces in to an organizations multitude of legacy
applications. If the data exists in your organization then SharePoint 2010 can
get to it, integrate it, and present it in a meaningful way, all from one
unified interface. When corporate Intranets first burst on to the scene many
years ago there was a lot of hype about all the ways in which they would
benefit an organization. For years now that dream has been waiting. The wait is
over folks and the dreamed fulfilled is SharePoint 2010!
Now that the cat is
out of the bag and I am free to begin showing off SharePoint 2010 I will be
releasing a number of demonstration video posts here that dive in to the topics
I have covered here and highlight in a concrete way in which this latest
version of SharePoint is going to rock the business world. Be sure to check
back here for more information and demonstrations. Well the SharePoint
Conference is in full swing and it's time for me to head out and take in some
of the goodness. Be sure though to check out my action items to get you started
on your SharePoint 2010 learning today and pre-register for the Beta as well.
Ciao
Michael
Michael's Must Do's:
Are you ready to
check out the new SharePoint 2010 site content including; Register for
SharePoint 2010 Beta Code, 3 Value Pillars of SharePoint 2010, SharePoint
Workloads Deep Dive, 10 New Demonstration Videos, Overview of Related
Technologies (SharePoint Designer, SharePoint Foundation), SharePoint
Communities Content (links to blogs, forums, etc), and more.
What are you waiting for? Get
started today!
Michael Gannotti is a
SharePoint Technology Specialist for the Microsoft Corporation and the author
of SocialMedia Talk with Michael Gannotti
- SharePoint For Internet Sites: Branded, Dynamic Web Experiences Made Easy!
-
Exciting times: only 6 days to go before I can share with you all the great innovation we have supercharged SharePoint 2010 with! Meanwhile, I just wanted to take a few minutes to debunk a myth about branding SharePoint-powered Internet sites. I will do so by sharing my take on what I think engendered this myth and providing countervailing evidence.
The myth
Because SharePoint originally started as an Intranet platform and because branding requirements for Intranet applications are lower than those for Internet applications, some have assumed that the way SharePoint looks on the Intranet is the way it would look on the Internet. Not so fast! It is not because customers decide not to invest in branding their Intranets that this is in any way reflective of SharePoint’s ability to support branding (changing the SharePoint site look & feel so it matches a corporate brand and complies with related policies). This misconception does not stop here. Indeed, we have occasionally heard in the marketplace that SharePoint is not ready for primetime on the Internet because it is primarily used on the Intranet. This looks like another deductive reasoning fallacy. How a product ends up being used does not necessarily, if ever, encapsulate what it is capable of doing. That one uses one’s sports car essentially or exclusively for commuting does not make it less of a sports car, for example. Similarly, it is not because SharePoint has historically been primarily used for Intranet applications that its 2007 release cannot handle Enterprise-class Internet applications. In fact, SharePoint For Internet Sites powers websites for a wide range of companies, from mid-size companies to many of the Fortune 500 and Forbes Global 2000 companies, as well as those of midsize companies. AMD, Conservation International, Ferrari, Continental Airlines, GOL, Hawaiian Airlines, Kroger, StatoilHydro, Viacom, Volvocars, US Marines are just a minute sample of all the customers who have bet on SharePoint to achieve their business goals on the web—whether it’s about attracting larger and new audiences, and/or developing customer loyalty, and/or monetizing products, services, or content. Visit www.wssdemo.com or yet www.topsharepoint.com for real-life screenshots of hundreds of SharePoint For Internet Sites-powered websites.
Embracing the myth challenge
Two of Microsoft’s Most Valued Professionals, Andrew Connell (Critical Path Training, LLC) and Randy Drisgill (SharePoint911), embraced the aforementioned misconception by developing a two-part white paper about the essential concepts needed to create an engaging user interface design. With this white paper, we did not want to force designers to learn any new tool; instead, we wanted to empower designers and magnify what they do best: design! For example, if the designers only swear by Photoshop; no worries, they do not have to use a different design tool because of SharePoint, we got them covered! They can just “Photoshop away” the design comps while following the documented easy steps about converting those into working HTML and CSS.
Don’t take my word for it…get the story from this customer!
Not yet convinced that SharePoint can support your branding needs on the Internet? Then, feel free to go see for yourself by watching the below video interview conducted by my colleague from the SharePoint End User Content Team, Tom Werner, who recently had the pleasure to meet Jared Lasater—a solution developer and partner technology lead at Salient6 with tremendous experience customizing SharePoint sites and ASP web applications for his clients. In this interview, Jared discusses his general approach to branding, some of the challenges encountered on the project, and the overall benefits of branding a SharePoint 2007 site. Specifically, he talks about how he went about branding an Internet-facing SharePoint 2007 site for the Puget Sound SharePoint User Group—a local SharePoint group in the Seattle area. He also explains how to take the site from the default SharePoint look & feel (the BlueBand template) and create a whole new look with new master pages, page layouts, CSS, and a rich set of graphics provided by Robert Chrestensen—a designer and creative director at Salient6.
I hope you will find this interview insightful.
- Tracking Michael At SharePoint Conference 2009
-
As the SharePoint Conference 2009 approaches I have been getting quite a bit of questions from folks as to whether I will be covering the event and how to find me while I am there? The following methods will be the best way to keep up with my conference postings as well as how to track me down during the event for some face time.
Microblogging (Twitter):
Yes I will be Tweeting away live during the event with my thoughts on presentations/announcements as well posting links of interest throughout the day. To follow my output on Twitter you can follow me directly on Twitter here @gannotti You will need to join Twitter to follow me so if you don't already have an account be sure to sign up at Twitter today. It's free, and painless. Sign up here. I am participating with EndUserSharePoint.com in their efforts and will be using the #spc09 Twitter hash tag. You can also find a wealth of other Microbloggers participating in
Live Streaming (UStream):
Yes, I will be doing some live streaming of the event via UStream. Whenever I live stream an auto notification will be sent to Twitter (another reason to be signed up on Twitter and to follow me there). However to catch me live so you can ask questions during a stream you would have to be on Twitter when it posts. There is however a better way. I have started separating out some of my personal and professional activities on Facebook by setting up a Facebook page for my blog SocialMedia Talk with Michael Gannotti. The page will be a place where folks can suggest activities for me on an ongoing basis (like LiveMeeting interactive presentations, Xbox Live social gaming nights, etc.) For the duration of the conference it will also be where I will post any planned live streaming events in advance. You can find the page here. Be sure to join it once you have seen it. Finally, you can also see a listing of past recordings as well as view any of the live streams via the Samurai Live page on my blog located here. All this a little confusing? ;-) Then just sign up on on my Facebook page here and it will provide the time of any streams as well as an easy to use link to view it.
Blog Posts:
I will be doing a number of blog posts throughout the conference. In them I will give rundowns as to announcements, my thoughts on new feature, interviews, and more. As a part of my new Expert Blogger status with the new Microsoft site "Because It's Everybody's Business" I will be posting event blog posting that are SharePoint focused there. For blog posts that are of a more personal nature, evening event recaps and social aspects I will post them to my personal blog SocialMedia Talk with Michael Gannotti. In all cases after posting I will Tweet links to the postings (another reason to follow on Twitter) and I will announce the posts on my Facebook page (another reason to sign up there as well).
Meet With Mike (Facebook Page):
I have been getting the most requests to meet in person while at the event. I would absolutely LOVE to meet each and everyone one of you while at the conference. To help make that happen, while still permitting me to attend all the sessions I will be posting my "where's Mikey" status to my Facebook page. I will post the sessions I am attending so we hang in the sessions, the events I am at, where I am hanging after hours, and more. My Facebook page is the ONLY location I will be posting that information to so you need to follow me there for the conference. So please sign up there to follow along and let's get together at the conference!
Geocasts (IncaX):
I do plan on doing a few outdoor geocasts using IncaX LiveMedia GPS on my HTC Windows Mobile phone while at the conference. After the conference I will post those I feel warrant it as blog postings but you can also see all my geocasts on my blog site on the special page I have set up here titled IncaX Geocasting Page.
Other SharePoint Conference Resources:
While I am doing the Mikey thing at the conference there is a ton of other resources for following along. Use the following links for more information on tracking all the cool ways to track the conference.
· SPC Social Events: 10 Steps to Prepare for SharePoint Conference #SPC09 - Joel Oleson has put together a great listing of resources and tips for the conference. Be sure to give this one a thorough read.
· EndUserSharePoint.com - Mark Miller has been THE man in organizing microblogging, blogging, streaming, etc. of the event getting a slew of SharePoint folks to participate. Be sure to check in on his site for information about the consolidated Twitter stream and more.
· SharePoint Conference 2009 site - Finally be sure to keep track of official postings by Microsoft on the conference site itself.
This years SharePoint conference is the biggest and best yet and with all the social computing maniacs, myself included, attending it promises to be one of the best covered events of its kind. So, in order to stay informed please do the following:
· Do follow me on Twitter
· Do sign up for my Facebook page
· Do check out Joel Oleson's blog post
· Do check in on EndUserSharePoint.com
Whether attending or not this years SharePoint Conference is THE techie event and you can enjoy it live or virtually. So get hopping on the Do's! ;-)
Ciao
Michael Gannotti is a SharePoint Technology Specialist for the Microsoft Corporation and the author of SocialMedia Talk with Michael Gannotti
Technorati Tags: Microsoft,SharePoint,Conference,Gannotti. SocialMedia,Technology
- Introduction To Michael Gannotti
-
Hi Everyone,
My name is Michael Gannotti and I am a SharePoint Technology Specialist for the Microsoft Corporation as well as author of the blog SocialMedia Talk. I have been riding this incredible wave known as SharePoint since it's launch in 2001, and what a ride it has been! Prior to coming to Microsoft I served as Corporate Systems Architect for Vanguard, was an Instructional Web Designer for Intracorp, a Family Preservation Case Manager in West Virginia, an 8th grade Teacher in Southern California, and prior to college a Sergeant in the United States Army. These days you can find me traveling the Southeast United States visiting client sites and working on solving real world business challenges using the many faceted capabilities of SharePoint.
In this blog column I hope to be able to use some of my experience gained over the years to good use in presenting SharePoint, solutions it offers, and the network of SharePoint community members who truly exemplify the ideal "Because it's everybody's business." You will find my delivery style a mix of serious and irreverent. I am a great believer in video as a medium for delivery and over the years have developed a number of online shows such as Michael on the Go, and the SocialMedia Samurai, that try to demystify SharePoint usage in business and help provide real world solution scenarios. Here on "Because it's everybody's business" I will be delivering new content with some of these personas that are familiar to my blogs readers as well screen casts, interviews, and more.
SharePoint gets me jazzed up and I hope as we take this online journey in SharePoint together that you will get excited too! I will be kicking off my column content this next week at the SharePoint 2009 conference live from Las Vegas! Stay tuned here for interviews with conference speakers, insight in to the offerings about to be unveiled, and more. It's going to be an exciting year in the world of SharePoint and next weeks conference is going to be mind blowing (hint hint.. I know a lot about what will be unveiled and I can hardly contain myself ;-)
'Till then this is Michael Gannotti wishing you a great day. Ciao!
PS - If you want to get to know me a bit better check out my introductory video below.
- SharePoint’s Founding Father, Jeff Teper, Talks About the SharePoint History, Vision, and Lessons Learned.
-
Hey everyone, I just wanted to share a
post from SharePoint's founding father and Information Week's 2009 Top 10 Innovator and
Influencer, Corporate
Vice-President Jeff Teper,
where he talks about the SharePoint History, Vision, and Lessons Learned.
SharePoint History
Hello!
As we are just two weeks away from
disclosing SharePoint 2010 at the SharePoint
Conference starting October 19th,
I wanted to write three posts to provide context on the upcoming release. This
first post will cover the history of SharePoint. I hope it will provide some
useful perspective behind our vision and what we have learned as well as a few
fun anecdotes. The second post will cover the engineering process for
SharePoint 2010 - how we design and develop SharePoint in the Office team, what
new approaches we have taken during the 2010 development cycle and my take on a
few frequent questions I hear from customers and partners. The third post will
coincide with the opening of SharePoint Conference and cover the major feature
investments. After that, our team will start blogging in depth about the new
SharePoint capabilities. For folks who cannot wait, we have highlighted a few
of the new features on the SharePoint 2010 Preview Site as commented on several Office 2010 client
capabilities including a few points of SharePoint integration on the Office Engineering Blog.
Before we jump in to this post, I want to
thank everyone who has been with us on the journey so far and is supporting us
in the release of SharePoint 2010 and feedback for releases beyond. While I
will talk about the efforts that evolved into SharePoint, its origin dates to
around March 1998 when we first started planning the projects that led to
SharePoint. Since the first beta of the first release, we have been extremely
fortunate to have your support and hear your feedback. It has been extremely
rewarding to see all things you are doing with SharePoint. We have posters of
many of your sites on the walls of Building 16 on the Microsoft Redmond Campus
and these are a source of great motivation and pride for our team to take
things to the next level. We always appreciated your ideas and feedback
friendly or otherwise about where the product should go or how we could help
you better. We think SharePoint 2010 will be another big step forward but we
know there is more to be done and are thankful you care enough to keep pushing
us. Finally, we want to thank the Microsoft teams around the world who has
worked so hard to build and support the product with special thanks to a few
dozen people who were with us from the very beginning in 1998. We are very
fortunate to have a great team, customers and partners and that is what keeps
us fired up to come to work every day.
Ok, on to the post.
Pre-History
As long-time Microsoft followers know, in
the 1990s we had several efforts targeting information access and sharing. The
rise of web on the internet and intranet was a great catalyst to focus these
plans. I will highlight three threads that I consider part of the SharePoint
pre-history in the late 1990s. The first thread is focused on end users via the
FrontPage and then Office Server Extensions. These extensions installed on web
servers to let users create and edit web sites, post Office documents, participate
in discussions and get subscriptions. Many ISPs hosted the Server Extensions
helping millions of consumers and business users collaborate on the web. There
was strong integration with Office 97 and Office 2000 so you might say these
were the first cloud-based Office web collaboration releases! The second thread
focused on more sophisticated web site developers and was called Site Server
which was a grab bag of tools and services to help create and manage sites.
Finally, we had a set of internal incubations. One was called "TeamPages" which
was developed inside the Access team enabling users to create and edit simple
web-based lists. Under the covers, this was one of the first uses of XML and
was the genesis of the "CAML" markup inside SharePoint that pre-dated XSLT. The
other was called the "Digital Dashboard" which was initially an effort between
our marketing, Excel and SQL teams to make it easy to create dashboards in
Outlook but quickly moved to a web-centric design. We learned a lot about the
needs of end users, developers and IT from these efforts and the strengths and
weaknesses of projects that helped us design the first release of SharePoint
and make a strategic bet for Microsoft in the second release. This process
continues at Microsoft as we have both top-down planned efforts as well as
organic prototyping in our product and research teams. For example, our Office
Labs Group created a social networking project called "Townsquare" that we used
a bit inside Microsoft before refining the ideas in SharePoint 2010's new
social networking features.
Vision
As part of planning of what became
SharePoint(s) V1 and Office XP, we did lots of research around the world. We
visiting different size and type organizations and met with a wide range of
users, developers and administrators. We talked to lots of people and looked at
lots of intranets, document and knowledge management deployments. It was
immediately clear there was an opportunity to help both end users and IT be
more efficient and effective. Many customers told us about intranets or ECM
systems they had rolled out with lots of fanfare and then failed to get used.
The web site got stale. Users shared documents via e-mail vs. the official
repository. Many customers told us about their challenges with lots of
different silos that had grown up to meet the needs of a range of different
business units. One Fortune 50 company told us they had counted and had 600
different content management systems! Imagine the difficulty for users trying
to collaborate, developers trying to link business processes and administrators
trying to keep costs down and reliability up. Users told us they wanted to go
around IT. IT told us when they did this they create flakey custom web sites.
But as with many latent needs, there was no single definition of the ideal
solution in the industry. So we worked on a plan to address both usability and
manageability needs. As I was writing the blog, I went through some of our
early presentations and I was struck by a one slide PowerPoint deck we gave to
Bill Gates early in the planning. We knew reviews with Bill were always intense
so we decided to come in with a single slide explaining our vision with lot of
screenshots of what we thought the product might look like. We have lots of
fancy slides now to explain SharePoint but I thought it would be fun to show
what we shared with Bill exactly as is below. And yes it was an intense
meeting!
SharePoint V1 and Office XP
As some of you recall, there were two
SharePoints at the beginning. These evolved from projects codenamed "Office
Server" and "Tahoe" around the Office XP development cycle. "Office Server"
evolved out of the FrontPage and Office Server Extensions and "Team Pages" and
targeted simple, bottoms-up collaboration. "Tahoe" was built on shared
technology with Exchange and the "Digital Dashboard" and was targeted at
top-down portals, search and document management. They shared Office client
integration and "Tahoe" had web part and search links so top-down portals could
contain integrate with bottoms-up sites. Coming up with the name "SharePoint"
was a fun part of the process. We were in a giant conference room with dozens
of proposed names on the wall. Everything from meaningless words we would imbue
with meaning in the market to "Office Document Server" which was descriptive
but boring and limiting. We agreed on "SharePoint" in a single meeting but had
many discussions then and in the years about what were the right words around "SharePoint".
We eventually did elect to use the same name for both projects to convey the
integration and future strategy. We decided to ground "Tahoe" in the "Portal"
category because it was an area of a lot of buzz ("Portal Power" had was a big
cover story for InformationWeek, there were portal conferences, reviews,
budgets, etc.) and we had seen Lotus Notes and Exchange had struggled to define
a new groupware category. So "SharePoint Team Services" and "SharePoint Portal
Server" were the first names. The most memorable part of this release cycle was
the end game. I remember hours being in what we then called the "war room" (a
hyperbolic, if not insensitive engineering term that we generally avoid now).
Projected on the wall was an Excel spreadsheet with the status of 20 customers
we wanted to know were live with their deployment before we shipped the
software. Program managers would come into room with updates from daily calls
with these early adopters about issues, how much content was stored in the
system and number of active users. When everyone was green, we released and had
a fairly memorable ship party. As we still do today, we had screenshots of each
of these customers' portals papered to the walls so everyone in the team would
know we weren't writing code for ourselves but to help these customers solve
business problems. One of the most gratifying aspects of this first release was
the reviews. EWeek's headline was "SharePoint's a Hit" and Computer Reseller News
called SharePoint a "Whopper of a product". But we knew there was a lot more to
do to build a truly integrated product and experience between the two
SharePoint and we could do a better job of holistic planning across scenarios
and technologies. Since not many people see a server software box anymore vs.
just getting the CDs or downloads, I thought it would be fun to show the
SharePoint 2001 package:
SharePoint 2003 and Office 2003
While it was great to see the rapid
adoption of the first release of STS and SPS, it was clear customers wanted a
more integrated and comprehensive solution from us. As just one example, they
told us like they liked the WYSWIG HTML editing of SharePoint Team Services and
the Web Part declarative and reusable editing of SharePoint Portal but wanted
to use both models on the same site? Inside Microsoft, we were deciding how
much to bet on SharePoint. Would it be a good product in a broad family of
servers or an even more fundamental bet for the company? It was exciting period
because we were at an inflection point on both our platform and application
strategies. On the platform side, we were making a very fundamental bet on Web Services
including collaborating with vendors across the industry on the evolution of
XML, SOAP and much more. We saw this and the increased maturation and
scalability of SQL Server would give SharePoint a powerful foundation for
highly scalable web-based solutions that eased developer integration and
customization. With growing computing power, we could host even the largest
companies on a few sever farms (Microsoft has 3 for its worldwide SharePoint
deployment). On the application side, we were hearing customers wanted Office
to go beyond personal productivity to organizational productivity and we had to
decide whether Microsoft would invest in content management, portals, unified
communications, business intelligence and many other new scenarios. As you can
guess now, in classic Microsoft fashion we decided to bet big. However, we were
pretty quiet about until we were close to beta of the 2003 wave. The entire
Office team had SharePoint as a vision pillar and we designed the user
experience, architecture, extensibility and in a more holistic way than we had
done in the previous release. We evolved STS into a more scalable and flexible
platform and build SPS on top of it. One of the many heated discussions during
this time was between the WYSWIG and data-driven camps on web user interface
framework and we ultimately reconciled these in the SharePoint page model where
pages have zones where the web site owner can decide who can add web parts. At
this point, we also knew that customers, partners and Microsoft would be
hosting SharePoint on the internet and we made a lot of fundamental investments
in role-based delegation, partitioning, stateless front-ends, etc. to enable
this. These key architecture bets enabled us to ultimately offering SharePoint
Online to both dedicated and multi-tenant customers which we ultimately did in
the 2007 release. While this was a long release, we could not have gotten the
integrated experience and platform as lots of different skunk works efforts. It
really needed teams across the organization to work every day to research,
plan, develop and test together. At the same time, it was a very aggressive
project and we had to make a lot of tradeoffs about what to defer to the
following release. One of the most controversial was item level security. We
knew this was a very critical feature for some projects and a big checkbox even
for people who wouldn't use it. However, it was going to be huge investment for
us on top of everything else we were doing and was not realistically going to
make the 2003 schedule. So we decided to defer it until the next release when
we could do it right. We still use this as an example in the team of the tough
tradeoffs needed for software projects. One of the best bets we made in this
release was MySites. This was a classic bottoms-up feature from the development
team. In this era, most portal products allowed users to have personalized
pages ala MSN, Yahoo, etc. The team proposed we give every user a personalized
site and is still very proud they shipped it in 2003 before there was a MySpace
or Facebook. It is a great example we talk about in product development about
not always doing what the customer asks for explicitly but what we think they
might eventually find most useful. When we first released MySites in 2003, many
IT people first asked us how to turn it off. By 2007, they were asking us how
to turn it back on as their employees and even their CEOs were asking them for
enterprise social networking. Below is a picture we used many of times inside
and outside the team to focus the 2003 team on what I call "The Scalable
SharePoint Release". We launched it as SharePoint Portal Server 2003 built on
top of Windows SharePoint Services V2. There were many important lessons from
this project about the power of shared vision and a collaboration culture.
However, we learned while we provided IT a central infrastructure users where
users could go create their own sites, we had not yet provided all the
management tools and governance guidelines people needed. That and depth
category investments were the focus on SharePoint 2007.
SharePoint and Office 2007
With the integrated experience and
framework in place, we began to add depth in the various modules of SharePoint.
Hence I think of 2007 as "The Pie Release" because of the picture we used below
to describe it. Content Management was our biggest area of feedback and,
therefore, investment. As customers put more content in SharePoint and built
more sites with it, we got a lot of requests to take this to the next level -
more formal processes, more oversight and more sophisticated web publishing.
Building on the new Microsoft platform technologies such as Windows Workflow
and Windows Right Management, we invested document and records management
across the server and client. We were very aware customers had a wide variety
of ECM applications in place. So while we invested to be a leader, particularly
breaking down many of the user experience and programmability barriers, we made
sure SharePoint was an open platform and worked with vendors across the
industry on a variety of integration approaches including published APIs and
protocols. One of the biggest sources of feedback internally and externally in
2003 was the relationship between SPS and our Content Management Server (CMS)
2002 web publishing product which was used by a lot of internet sites. The
teams came together and proposed a shared experience and architecture that was
one of the highlights of the 2007 release. No longer do the pictures of the
SharePoint sites just sit on the walls of Building 16, you can see themselves
many of them live on the internet by navigating from a growing number of 3rd-party
blogs and sites on the internet likes www.topsharepoint.com. This was another good example of the power of a
shared long-term vision. To be frank, we had a lot of pressure to do something
more incremental. Complementing content management, we increased our search
depth with a focus on new relevance algorithms and innovative people and
business data search. Finally, to enable customers to build business process
integration and business intelligence portals, we added Excel Services and
InfoPath Forms Services. Besides being exciting features, we gained invaluable
learning for the team how to have an architecture that worked in the rich Office
client and on the server with web access with high fidelity, round tripping,
etc. We have expanded on this and our experience with Outlook + Outlook Web
Access in the Office team for the new set of read-write Office Web Apps as part
of the 2010 wave. While customers appreciated the depth and management knobs,
from this release we learned we need to invest more in readiness (training our
employees, customers and partners) and frankly it took us a while to catch-up
with the demand of 2007. This blog was a big part of our investments that I
will discuss below. We are very focused on addressing technical readiness for
the 2010 release and the depth you will see around the SharePoint Conference
this month will be a big step towards this. However, there are many other
activities in progress to train 10s of thousands of people before we release.
We want to hear your feedback on what else you need so we can have the content,
training and industry ready by the release of SharePoint and Office in the
first half of next year.
Supporting SharePoint 2007
If you have been a frequent reader of this
blog, you know notice we have spent very few of the 100s of posts talking about
SharePoint 2010. This is for two reasons. First, we did not want to start
talking about the next release until it was solid and we were near something
actionable (e.g. getting educated on the product, try out the beta). Second, we
want to keep the focus of Microsoft and industry on great SharePoint 2007
deployments. Since the release we have made a number of investments our team
has talked about in this blog. I will highlight just a few things because many
have been posted about already:
- Enhancing Technical Content and
Guidance. Since the release of 2007, we doubled the size of the SharePoint
documentation team and increased the content on TechNet, MSDN and this blog. We
created a virtual team, called the SharePoint Content Partnership Council,
spanning R&D, documentation, consulting, support, marketing, etc. that
reviews your feedback and prioritizes the content to be written or improved. We
have focused on the key areas you have told us about such as interoperability
and governance. We also evangelized a lot of consultants and partners to post "real
world" experience to the blog since know that is very important to you.
- Increasing Microsoft and Partner
Staffing and Training. We were bullish on the adoption of SharePoint 2007 but
frankly we underestimated the demand and didn't have enough trained Microsoft
staff and partners at launch. Since then we expanded our internal support and
consultant staff significantly and introduced training programs reaching
thousands of people outside of Microsoft. We introduced a new multi-level
certification including a "Mmaster" designation and a packaged offering of 5,
10 and 15 planning for customers called SharePoint Deployment Services that
over a thousand organizations have used. This has been a great source of
feedback. We have already started the process of training Microsoft employees
on SharePoint 2010 and the SharePoint Conference starts the process for 2010
for the industry. Much more to come that you will hear about in this blog very
shortly.
- Creating a Customer Assistance Team
(CAT) - In the past, Program Managers in our development worked with our
consultants, customers and partners to get feedback and publish best practices.
In 2003, we created an elite team of experienced consultants called the
SharePoint Center of Excellence to drive this within our consulting
organization and partners. After the 2007 release, we went a step further
creating a CAT team within R&D that lived and breathed the most demanding
deployments to make sure our content on topics like capacity planning or
disaster recovery was deep and we had even richer feedback loop into the 2010
development team.
Enhancing SharePoint 2007
One topic some people ask us about is
responding to a wide range of requests for new features and solutions. I will
spare you the software laws of physics discussion about why we do not update 1%
of SharePoint every month. We spend a lot of time thinking about this and think
the model we have gets the great amount of capabilities out to customers in a
reliable and predictable way for a product of the scope and mission criticality
of SharePoint. However, we know there are places people need more solutions
with agility and I expect some people would be surprised by the investments we
have made so I thought I would walk through a few of them below.
- Cumulative
Updates - We heard your feedback
that you want something more convenient than hot fixes and more frequent than
Service Packs so we introduced Cumulative Updates for SharePoint and Office.
This was a big change for our development, testing and release process. It wasn't
all smooth at the beginning and we heard your feedback on this blog about
simplifying these and my sense is the feedback is now very positive.
- SharePoint Administration Toolkit - We created a team to address feedback on IT
operations requests and release supported tools that we have posted on this
blog. Unlike core features, these are more straightforward to do because they
don't invalidate the underlying code nor create a wide mix of configurations
for us to test.
- Toolkits and Codeplex
- As SharePoint is mission critical, you asked us to make sure the base product
is robust, performant, secure, localized, upgradable, documented, supported,
etc. Not surprisingly, this is expensive and causes us not to do as many
features as if we had a lower release bar. Some of you are fine with that.
Others have told us you would like some starter solutions to save you from
writing value-added code yourselves. Hence, we have invested in a broad range
of kits for SharePoint (Silverlight, Community, Site Templates, Patterns and
Practices, etc.) and fostered a vibrant open source community on Codeplex while
setting expectations these are not packaged products. I just checked and there
are now 876 projects for SharePoint. We know these are in various stages of
quality and adoption and unfortunately we can't bless them but do think it is
important to foster the community and listen to which ones you find valuable.
- SharePoint Partner Solutions and
Services - While we aspire to provide the most comprehensive solution in the
industry, customers have asked for a growing range of solutions and services
and we have worked to foster a growing community of thousands of business
around the world building on top of SharePoint. They have the expertise, focus
and reach to meet a large and growing range of needs. We also strive to make
SharePoint a great business opportunity to foster the investment and innovation
in our partners.
- Search Investments - We heard that great search is a critical part of
making a successful SharePoint deployment. We also see highly scalable and
flexible search technology as a key source of innovation across internet and
intranet sites, content management, social networking, business and
intelligence and more in the future. Therefore we did two things following a "good,
better, best" approach that people have liked with SharePoint. First, we
released a free version of SharePoint Search named Search Server Express.
Second, we acquired the leading enterprise search firm, FAST. FAST's ESP is the
most sophisticated and flexible technology serving the world's largest
publishing, media, commerce and telecommunications sites on the internet as
well as many of the most sophisticated internal search applications. The FAST
engineering team is outstanding balancing extreme technical depth with great
passion for the most sophisticated customer scenarios. We continue to invest in
both standalone products and products optimized for SharePoint (ESP for
SharePoint). Over the last year and a half the combined Microsoft Enterprise
Search Group has come together and we will share a lot of innovation in user
experience, relevance, connectivity and more as part of the 2010 disclosure. We
will continue to invest in standalone search technology and have some exciting
work coming in the next year there as well.
- SharePoint Online - Based on the SharePoint 2007 codebase, we released both a Dedicated
(single tenant) version of SharePoint Online as well as a Standard
(multi-tenant) version of SharePoint Online. This is all part of our Business
Productivity Online Suite including SharePoint Online, Exchange Online, Office
Communications Online and Live Meeting. The response to both the dedicated and
multi-tenant offering has been outstanding. Customers have told us they like
getting access to the most comprehensive and flexible set of collaboration and
communication tools with the reliability, security and manageability they need.
Large organizations such as Coca Cola Enterprise have adopted SharePoint Online
to give them more agility and free up their IT staff to partner with their business
users on more critical activities than configuring server farms. It also lets
us reach new business who previously were not able to deploy collaboration
technologies because of lack of internal IT expertise. SharePoint Online also
lets our partners work with us on a recurring revenue stream and focus their
business on higher value and profitable services. Finally, because Microsoft
does the operations and incurs the cost of running SharePoint Online it is an
incredible feedback loop at high scale that helps drive product and
documentation improvements that we will share with our customers running their
own servers. As I will share in the next blog post, the development of
SharePoint 2010 was very much informed by our experience during the last few years
on SharePoint Online.
So as you can see the team has been very
busy enhancing SharePoint 2007 and not just working on 2010.
Lessons Learned
To sum up our lessons learned from the
last decade on SharePoint that we'll apply to our second decade of investments:
- Customers come first. There is a lot of
exciting technology in SharePoint but the objective is not a building a
computer science project. What matters is solving business problems. We love to
see your sites so keep the case studies coming!
- Long-term vision and commitment.
Business is faster paced than ever and we and you need to continue to adapt. At
the same time, success usually only comes from a clear long-term vision,
commitment and feedback loop. I think that has been a key to your response to
SharePoint as we discussed above.
- Balance of both innovation and
execution. This is something we've prided ourselves on in Office. Sometimes it
means we incubate new technologies like we have done in the history of
SharePoint. Sometimes in means we take bets where we believe we can improve the
customer experience like MySites in SharePoint 2003 and the Ribbon in Office
2007. At the same time, shipping a product and service as comprehensive as
SharePoint Server and SharePoint Online is a critical engineering project and
you are depending on us to do it with rigor and continuous improvement.
- Viral and top down adoption. As
hopefully you have seen our approach for SharePoint dating back to the first
release is trying to strike the balance between empowerment and governance so
people can be more productive while the organization can manage its knowledge,
security and costs.
- Feedback loop. We need to continue to
listen to your feedback about what we've done well and where we can improve.
Even if we can't address the feedback immediately, we must always listen,
analyze and decide how we can best address it. We have a number of approaches
for this in Office and SharePoint that I will cover in the next post but we
always welcome your feedback in this blog and at the upcoming events.
Thanks for your support and for reading
this long. Hope it was interesting. I will post in a week about the development
process we used for SharePoint 2010.
Jeff
Jeff Teper - Corporate Vice President,
SharePoint Server, Microsoft
