Microsoft to detail SharePoint upgrade

InfoWorld - Microsoft will detail its planned SharePoint Server 2010 business collaboration platform for the enterprise and Web on Monday, emphasizing Internet, developer and video capabilities.

SharePoint 2010 is feature-complete and will be offered in a beta release in November along with the Office 2010 applications suite. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer will discuss the upcoming SharePoint release in a keynote presentation at the Microsoft SharePoint Conference 2009 in Las Vegas.

[ InfoWorld's J. Peter Bruzzese got an early look at SharePoint Server 2010. Check out his report. ]

"It's the biggest release we have done to date," said Jeff Teper, corporate vice president for SharePoint at Microsoft.

Due to be generally available the first half of next year, the 2010 version of the platform will make it easier to run Internet sites. A lower priced version will be offered for small and medium-sized businesses. Exact pricing of that  version has not yet been revealed.

Microsoft also is extending its SharePoint Online hosting service. SharePoint Online has been focused on internally facing collaboration within a single enterprise. "Now, you can expose [a business]  on the Internet," Teper said. The external-facing sites can be used for capabilities such as e-commerce, marketing or communications about government services.

Users can run the SharePoint Server 2010 server themselves, or Microsoft can host it on SharePoint Online. "You choose server or service. You run it or we run it," said Teper.

SharePoint Server 2010 is going into beta alongside Office 2010 to enable easier collaboration using the two products. "You have Office on the desktop and SharePoint on the server," Teper said. "We've designed as a family to work together."

Featured in SharePoint Server 2010 is the ability to save videos onto SharePoint. While it will be simpler to deploy videos through Microsoft's Silverlight browser plug-in technology, users also can run them in the rival Adobe Flash format.

Editing of Web pages will be enhanced through use of the Microsoft Office ribbon, supporting capabilities such as dragging and dropping of video.  Users also can design workflows that include approval processes, such as having a press release approved by marketing before it goes to an Internet site.

Analysts were impressed with social capabilities for SharePoint Server 2010.

"Folks [have been] hesitant to deploy SharePoint as the Facebook for the enterprise, but I think there's going to be a lot of organizations that will seriously consider that," with the 2010 release offering capabilities such as communities and better support for blogs and wikis, said analyst Rob Koplowitz, of Forrester. Integration between Office 2010 and SharePoint Server 2010 is what boosts social computing in the release, Microsoft said.