Let the SharePoint Hype Begin
For years Microsoft has had a groupware collaboration story more confusing than a Rick Perry sound bite (to be fair I've done my share of public speaking and it is way too easy to freeze and spew a bunch of garbled nonsense).
Microsoft had shared folders in Exchange and collaboration tools built into Office. And then it bought Groove.
Now it is clear that SharePoint is the only sharing tool that truly matters to Microsoft -- it's putting every bit of its substantial weight behind it.
I've seen this puppy grow. It used to be that the vast majority of Redmond readers not only had Windows and Windows Servers (of course), but also owned Exchange and SQL Servers. I reckon the majority of you also have SharePoint installed somewhere.
At this week's SharePoint conference, in the same Anaheim convention center that held Build, Microsoft gave a few updates -- and more than a few bangs on the drum. SharePoint is clearly on the move with some 125 million users and over a billion dollars in annual sales.
Microsoft says an update for the Office 365 version of SharePoint will ship this year. Since SharePoint is a document-sharing system, it really isn't transaction oriented and is a good fit for the cloud.
The Redmond Media Groups does work where we access a SharePoint server clear across the country. While not a cloud, per se, we still have to traverse our WAN and then the 'Net -- and performance seems OK.
A more vague revelation is the fact that Redmond is building its next major release. When is Microsoft not building its next major release?
In this case, Microsoft boasts this rev has the biggest development team ever and will be its biggest release ever. I hope 'big' means colossally great, not just colossally large.
If you want to be a SharePoint guru, this is a new certification program, Microsoft Certified Architects for SharePoint.
Is SharePoint all it's cracked up to be? Or am I the one cracking up?
You tell me at [email protected].
Posted by Doug Barney on 10/05/2011 at 1:18 PM