New and improved SharePoint 2010
May 2010 saw the official release of SharePoint 2010, the latest release in the family of software products developed by Microsoft for collaboration, file sharing and web publishing. http://sharepoint.microsoft.com/en-us/product/Pages/default.aspx
The earliest version of Microsoft SharePoint was released in 2001 but it didn’t see widespread adoption until the successful debut of SharePoint 2007 and the integration with social software, such as blogs, wikis and social networking Web sites. With the release of the enhanced 2010 version, Microsoft claims SharePoint is the fastest growing product in company history.
Searching has always been meant to be a cornerstone of SharePoint, and a key element of the value proposition for deploying SharePoint into organisations. The new release incorporates the FAST Search technology that Microsoft acquired from the Norway-based Fast Search & Transfer Company. As its name implies, FAST Search is designed for high-end scalability. It delivers an exceptional intranet and people search experience and a platform for building custom search-driven applications.
Knowledge sharing is one of the vital operations in any organisation. SharePoint 2010 makes knowledge sharing simple and effective. You will be able to make all the vital information available to the entire organisation in a matter of just few clicks. Knowledge sharing has never been any easier. SharePoint 2010 also allows version control and document approval functionalities.
SharePoint can provide significant help with Business Intelligence strategy. It will let you store data that represents your organization’s key business processes, to organize that data in a useful manner, and to present it as meaningful information. Knowledge workers can act on that information to increase productivity and to provide feedback that improves underlying business processes.
Microsoft SharePoint and the Office Suite of Applications have had integration points with each other for several years, but now with 2010 there have been significant enhancements to this story. Collaboration has become an intuitive part of the user experience, and is a familiar ingredient in all of the Office 2010 Applications. The powerful combination of SharePoint and Office means that, not only will individual efficiency increase, but teams will be able to communicate effectively, stay in touch and of course work on shared content.
SharePoint 2010 represents the culmination of a vision that puts SharePoint at the core of an organization’s Enterprise Content and Application strategy. Microsoft listened and learned from customers using SharePoint 2007, and the maturity of the product as both an end-user and development platform is enormous.
