Microsoft released the public beta of SharePoint 2010 in November. Its claim to fame is its support of rapid app development. SharePoint has become one of Microsoft's most insanely popular products and Microsoft would like to see the 2010 version become the de facto platform for custom business social apps.
IT developers will need to broaden their skill set across multiple areas if they are to succeed in their next job search, according to recruitment firm Hays Information Technology.
The need to move from a siloed environment to a unified administrative system drove Michael Plenty, ICT manager at Marist College in Canberra, to deploy SharePoint in a matter of months.
Many small businesses have relied on Microsoft's Small Business Server (SBS) family of servers to get their feet wet with their first server and network. Introduced back in 1997 as BackOffice Small Business Server 4.0, SBS has matured into a tightly integrated platform of the most important services a small company needs: file and printer functions, email, calendar and contact sharing, and document collaboration. While it is limited in the maximum number of concurrent user connections, SBS doesn't shirk core services, providing enterprise-grade features at a price point almost every small business can afford.
SharePoint came about as an effort to bring Microsoft Offices usability to tools for electronic collaboration. Jeff Teper, the Microsoft vice president in charge of SharePoint development, says the company saw an opportunity with users who wanted to share their files but didn't need a heavyweight content management system such as EMC's Documentum. SharePoint 2010 integrates Microsoft's PerformancePoint business intelligence tools and its advanced search engine, called Fast, as well as strengthens SharePoint as a development platform.
Microsoft released the public beta of SharePoint 2010 in November. Its claim to fame is its support of rapid app development. SharePoint has become one of Microsoft's most insanely popular products and Microsoft would like to see the 2010 version become the de facto platform for custom business social apps.
SharePoint 2010 may be on Microsoft's immediate road map, but users churning away on the current 2007 platform can still juice their rollouts with a host of add-ons that make the existing version seem new again.
Microsoft SharePoint Server implementations can get ugly.