14 DAY TRIAL // SharePoint Server 2010 is not only the biggest release of the product to date, but also the most important version since introduction, Microsoft Chief Executive Officer Steve Ballmer opined at the company’s SharePoint Conference 2009 in Las Vegas. Microsoft announced that the general public would be able to get a taste of just what the next iteration of SharePoint has in store come next month. In November, along with the public Beta of Office 2010, Microsoft will also make available to the public a Beta development milestone of SharePoint Server 2010.
According to Ballmer there are three critical aspects of SharePoint Server 2010 that will contribute to the evolution of collaboration within a company. Microsoft’s CEO noted that the SharePoint platform could easily be extended with rich content and third-party applications, that the Internet website capabilities of the product allowed business users to take advantage of a single solution, while the third aspect was related to increased flexibility when it comes down to having customers choose between on-premise and Cloud-based deployments.
“By taming the overflow of information across systems and technologies, SharePoint enables organizations to thrive,” Ballmer noted. “SharePoint 2010 is the biggest and most important release of SharePoint to date. When paired with Microsoft Office 2010, SharePoint 2010 will transform efficiency by connecting workers across a single collaboration platform for business.”
Just as the additional components of the Office 2010 System, SharePoint offers users the familiar Ribbon graphical user interface. But integration with Office 2010 goes much further than meets the eye. Fact is that Microsoft has made sure that SharePoint and office share social tagging allow customers to benefit from backstage integration as well as document life-cycle management. SharePoint 2010 also comes to the table with built-in support for rich media, new Web content management features, new SharePoint tools in Microsoft Visual Studio 2010, Business Connectivity Services, Rich APIs, Enterprise features in SharePoint Online. On top of this, Microsoft has also introduced two new SharePoint Server 2010 editions specifically designed for companies with Internet businesses.
“In today’s economy, controlling costs and expenses is essential,” added David Glenn, director of Enterprise Operations at Del Monte Foods Co. “However, we still have the requirement to make sure our employees, customers and partners can get the information they need to be productive, no matter where they are. SharePoint 2010 is going to allow us to do that more effectively.”