SharePoint 2010 release date announced

SharePoint 2010 is 'The Business Collaboration Platform for the Enterprise and the Web'. More than simply a document management or intranet content management system, SharePoint provides you with a complete software platform to enable business to collaborate far more seamlessly than ever before, to build customised online workflows to simplify and rationalize your business processes, and to create a single-view portal to back office systems.

The following are some key information notes edited from the Microsoft SharePoint 2010 product information web pages which you can read in full online here: http://sharepoint2010.microsoft.com

Making people more productive is a direct result of enabling them to access resources and knowledge regardless of where they are and what device they have accessible, while providing them with a user experience that increases usability and adoption. SharePoint 2010 provides all of this through cross-device and cross-browser read/write access, seamless integration with Microsoft Office, and an exceptional user experience around accessing, editing, and publishing SharePoint sites, whether inside or outside the firewall.

Office Integration

Microsoft Office is, by far, the most commonly used business productivity software in the world. Office has always been about automating tasks and providing people with choices in how they get things done. Office 2010 and SharePoint 2010 provide users with a seamless integration of capabilities that span across Client and Server, often without users even realizing that both are involved.

Anywhere Access

Mobile work isn't just for the sales force anymore. Today, most businesses support telecommuting, and they expect employees to be "always on, always connected," even when they are away from the office. SharePoint 2010 offers a diverse set of capabilities that extends people's access to resources and allows them to be productive regardless of the tools or devices they have available.

Cut Costs with a Unified Infrastructure

Driving cost efficiencies and accomplishing more with the same resources is possible through the consolidation of business productivity solutions onto SharePoint 2010. The ability to deploy any of the integrated capabilities and new enterprise-class management tools to intranet, extranet, and Internet sites, as well as the choice of on-premises installation or hosted services, paves the way for optimizing IT resources and significantly lowering the total cost of ownership of business productivity solutions.

Platform Consolidation

The rich set of integrated capabilities for business collaboration provided by SharePoint 2010, in addition to its enterprise-scale manageability, will enable more customers to retire niche solutions and focus new solutions on SharePoint. This will accelerate their ability to drive efficiencies, allowing IT departments to achieve more impact with the same resources.

Deployment Choice

Nowadays, IT is required to support scale agility, allowing its business collaboration platform to be scaled up and out quickly, based on changing business needs. SharePoint 2010 provides IT with the flexibility of choosing whether to deploy on-premises or in the cloud, thus enhancing its ability to support any given scenario while optimizing resources and remaining relevant and efficient.

IT Productivity

With business collaboration and productivity becoming instrumental to success, IT departments are required to do more with no additional resources. With SharePoint 2010, robust management tools enable IT to multiply its impact and achieve a higher degree of effectiveness with the same resources.

Rapidly Respond to Business Needs

In times when business volatility is on the rise and time-to-market is key, SharePoint 2010 enables all users (end users, power users, designers, and professional developers), to customize the out-of-box platform and deploy solutions that will enable them to address specific business needs more quickly and more effectively. SharePoint 2010 includes tools and capabilities that allow businesses to maximize the impact of existing investments and knowledge, and to provide all users with bi-directional interaction with line-of-business data. These tools and capabilities make it possible to shorten the time between recognizing a business need and delivering a business productivity solution to address it.

Developer Productivity

In alignment with SharePoint's approach of doing more with no additional resources, investments like integration with Visual Studio 2010 will enable customers to rely on existing programming expertise to enrich the SharePoint platform and increase the quality and ROI on their investments.

Data Connectivity

A major advancement in SharePoint is allowing users, regardless of their technical expertise, to interact with line-of-business data, surface it in their SharePoint sites, analyze it, and make updates to be reflected in the external data source itself, such as ERP and CRM systems.

Composite Solutions

Enabling users to address specific business and collaboration needs, while relieving IT from the need to be involved all changes to the platform, is made possible through a rich set of tools and features that allow users to create no-code solutions and to deploy those solutions in an easy and secure manner.

For more information on SharePoint 2010 for public portals (and any enquiries regarding SharePoint), website and intranet development, support and hosting services, please contact us at andrew.chalmers@ballardchalmers.com or call 01342 410223.

Sign up to receive our regular email newsletter

Return to News