Forrester Likes SharePoint 2010

In a recent Forrester report, the research group really honed in on  two main points: the importance/success of MOSS 07 and how the release of hosted SharePoint 2010 will make an exponentially bigger impact on businesses everywhere. We at Fpweb.net couldn’t agree more on the triumphs of MOSS 07 and absolutely can’t wait to bring you SharePoint 2010 hosting.

Just like liver and onions, SharePoint 2010 may not be for everyone.
As we delve deeper into the next generation of SharePoint, things become just a tad more complicated. Some folks will only need SharePoint Foundation (essentially WSS v4) – which Fpweb.net will soon host.  Yet others, who need more than 2010 Foundation can provide, will need the vastly different SharePoint 2010 Server. With Server 2010, you will be introduced to several different “flavors” (or functionalities) that you will be able to add “menu style” to your Fpweb.net SharePoint 2010 hosting plan.

Expect to see plenty more about these different “flavors” pop up in another blog shortly. Right now, I’d like to share the top 5 features that Forrester considers significant in SharePoint Server 2010.

Better Social Networking in SP2010

MySites have dramatically upped the ante of SharePoint 2010 with personal blogging, tagging and activity feeds. They easily integrate with Microsoft  Business Connectivity Services (BCS) to chat with data in any of your company’s departments, like sales or HR. They also tie into some of the great SharePoint apps available at Fpweb.net, so that everyone can have what they need at their finger tips upon login.

I think it’s safe to say that pretty much everybody uses Facebook. SharePoint Server 2010 goes with what folks already know, crafting MySites to look very similar to a Facebook profile page. Just like Facebook, you can tag content for better searching and metadata indexing. This is a fantastic usability move by the Microsoft SharePoint Team, seeing as the familiar look and functions will minimize learning time.  SharePoint 2010 has also taken a page out of Twitter’s book, now incorporating both microblogging and activity feeds.

Wikis and blogs were a great idea in MOSS 2007 but they sure weren’t easy. Thankfully, Microsoft has changed this for the better. We’re breathing a sigh of relief because we desperately need this capability over at Fpweb.net (as I’m sure you do too).  Working With SharePoint Offline

You can now take your MySite documents with you offline thanks to a Server 2010 feature called SharePoint Workspace. Quickly edit them and sync back up when you regain network or Internet connectivity.

SharePoint has finally caught up to Lotus Notes in terms of offline functionality. While this isn’t exactly new,  it wasn’t built into MOSS 2007, leaving us to work with either Microsoft Groove or Colligo. Now, you can access all your SharePoint libraries, lists and forms (even InfoPath) literally anywhere, anytime. Choose between peer-to-peer collaboration – or – a rich client to the SharePoint server.

SharePoint Application Development

Hooray, less coding required!  SharePoint Designer has improved Visual Studio and Silverlight support, as well as tightened its integration  with SharePoint 2010. Combine these improvements with a wide array of SharePoint 2010 ready business line applications from Fpweb.net  for less coding, faster project completion and a quicker return on your SharePoint investment.

Easier Line-of-Business Connections

Connecting hosted MOSS to things like ERP and CRM systems was far from easy and sometimes didn’t work at all. Business Connectivity Services (BCS) effectively replaces the headache-inducing Business Data Catalog (BDC) functionality of MOSS 2007. It alleviates connectivity pain while allowing two-way communication between business applications and SharePoint 2010 hosted by Fpweb.net.

Better Search and Enterprise Content Management (ECM)

Think fast! FAST Search Server 2010 is built into SharePoint 2010 and included with the SharePoint Enterprise CAL (client access license). Fpweb.net will fully support FAST which will run, ironically, on our SuperFast™ network (sorry couldn’t help myself). In a nutshell, FAST is mind-blowing with added index redundancy,  scaling queries better than any previous SharePoint release. ECM limitations have been removed in SharePoint 2010, enabling lists to support up to 1 million items and document libraries to handle up to 200 million items.

This may even be enough to cover the photos from my next family vacation – even my 8 year old daughter can snap pictures with her Nintendo DS now. There’s a good co-marketing opportunity for Nintendo and Microsoft – real world use of SharePoint from the next generation.