Microsoft Unveils SharePoint Server 2010

Today, at Microsoft Corp.’s SharePoint Conference in Las Vegas, Microsoft Chief Executive Officer Steve Ballmer announced that the public beta of Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 and Microsoft Office 2010 will become available in November, and revealed some of the new SharePoint Server 2010 capabilities for the first time.

During his keynote address, Ballmer talked broadly about SharePoint Server as a business collaboration platform and highlighted three key areas. One was how organizations can respond quickly to business needs with an improved developer platform that makes it easier to build rich content and collaboration applications. Another topic was the enhanced Internet site capabilities that help businesses drive revenue and retain customers on a single platform. The third was the choice and flexibility between on-premises and cloud solutions. At the event, Microsoft showcased the breadth of SharePoint Server 2010 that ranges from wikis to workflows, while Ballmer’s keynote address highlighted features and capabilities such as these:

• A new ribbon user interface that makes end users more productive and customization of SharePoint sites easy
• Deep Office integration through social tagging, backstage integration and document life-cycle management
• Built-in support for rich media such as video, audio and Silverlight, making it easy to build dynamic Web sites
• New Web content management features with built-in accessibility through Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0, multilingual support and one-click page layout, enabling anyone to access SharePoint Server sites
• New SharePoint tools in Microsoft Visual Studio 2010, giving developers a premier experience with the tools they know and trust
• Business Connectivity Services, which allow developers to connect capabilities to line-of-business data or Web services in SharePoint Server and the Office client
• Rich APIs and support for Silverlight, representational state transfer (REST) and Language-Integrated Query (LINQ), to help developers rapidly build applications on the SharePoint platform
• Enterprise features in SharePoint Online such as Excel Services and InfoPath Forms Services, which make it simple to use, share, secure and manage interactive forms across an organization
• The addition of two new SharePoint SKUs for Internet-facing sites, including an on-premises and hosted offer
  

The public betas of Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010, Office 2010, Project 2010 and Visio 2010 will become available in November 2009; more information is available at http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=9689707.
Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 will be available in the first half of 2010. More information about Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 can be found at http://www.microsoft.com/sharepoint.