Breakout session Sharepoint Pros and Cons #intra10

Breakout session by Toby Ward (and blog).

Gives a general overview of Sharepoint old and new versions. "Sharepoint does a lot of things, but does very few things very well." (CMSWatch) Search is ok, not perfect. Content management is basic, simple, but some need heavier stuff. Some clients have site sprawl. Although not many in the room seem to have this problem. Good integration with Microsoft tools, although sometimes work is needed. Sharepoint can be extensive.

The above-mentioned remarks relate mostly to Sharepoint 2007.

Not many using Sharepoint to power to the corporate intranet. More on department and workgroup level.

Now over to Sharepoint 2010. Release date is May 12. (A guy in the room won the Canada cap for getting that right.)

Toby says: don't migrate right away. Wait for the first service pack to be released.

Parts of Sharepoint 2010:

  • sites
  • composites (mashups)
  • insights
  • search
  • content
  • communities

Biggest improvements: the publishing platform (wiki - which is much better than in 2007, Toby says). Web content management, taxonomy and meta data, social media (FAST), digital assess management and records management too. When upgrading things to 2010 things should still work coming from 2007. Sharepoint online will also be improved. Features of 2010 will be release for SP online at the end of 2010.

Toby goes into these items one by one. Interesting: create flows in Visio and import them to Sharepoint. Microsoft guy in room says: It's not that sexy yet in vs 1.0.

Governance still needs to be done; it's not Sharepoint's responsibility anyway.

Pricing for Sharepoint 2010 is not clear yet.

You need a heavy infrastructure and computer to run Sharepoint.

Advice:

  • stick with 2007 until mid 2011. But then move over if you use MS stuff.

Links to his slides will be on Communexions.com.

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