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Oh How Far We Have Come: SharePoint Decade Reflections and Contrast

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As we approach the end of the year it is customary for people to take stock of the year and reflect back on what has transpired. Certainly in the realm of SharePoint and the Office System there is much to reflect upon. This past year we have seen the explosion of a vibrant SharePoint community worldwide built upon the enthusiasm for the SharePoint 2007 product set. We have seen SharePoint 2007 launch an incredible wealth of solutions as ISVs continue to find new, innovative, uses for the functionality of SharePoint. Perhaps the crowning moment this past year occurred when 7,500 SharePoint faithful converged on Las Vegas for the SharePoint Conference for the unveiling of SharePoint 2010. What an incredible event and what an incredible response to the richest offering of capabilities yet. I could spend a lot of time reflecting on all of these areas. They all deserve attention and reflection. However, with approaching 2101 and a new decade I thought instead I might reach back a little further.

Though it launched in 2001 as a Corporate Systems Architect at a large financial services organization I became involved with a Microsoft program in 1999/2000 called Tahoe (which became SharePoint. Today when we look at the capabilities of SharePoint in 2010 we discuss its broad Platform/Infrastructure capabilities around delivering Sites, Communities, Content, Search, Insights, and Composites. Within each of these areas are an array of capabilities that we could literally spend hours discussing. The breadth and depth of SharePoint 2010 is staggering which helps explain why it has become, and here is where I get to roll out my favorite tongue twister, the most prolific portal product on the planet today. ;-) In 2001 though the first release of SharePoint was much more modest in its offering. Focusing on web based document centric collaboration, search, and portal capabilities, SharePoint sought to bring the emerging power of web based productivity to the masses for the first time. Before that I can remember my own frustration with web products. The darlings of of many of us geeky types, they forced end users to come to IT for almost everything. It was as if IT held some special bag of mojo that was doled out according to the judgment of folks who did not own the content or the processes involved. As a result we saw rogue file shares, PCs serving as pseudo Intranets under someone's desk, and more popping up. Tahoe/SharePoint sought to change all that. Based on the simple premise that users knew how to use a browser and Microsoft Office, SharePoint sought to put the productivity and creative force in the hands of end users. It got me so excited in its focus that I applied to work at Microsoft and well, have been working with it ever since.

To help put a little perspective on where SharePoint has been this past decade and to contrast it with where it is going I thought I would share a little blast from the past. Back in 2002, while I worked out of the Microsoft Malvern office, our district Marketing folks and I worked to create a lead in informational CD to help drive awareness and promote some ongoing events around SharePoint we were putting on. I made the CD using Microsoft Producer for PowerPoint, a free add-on for creating Web based and CD based content (I miss that application!) While cleaning out my office I ran across a copy of it and have used Microsoft Expression Encoder to grab a screen cast of it for your viewing below. Watching it I was amazed at some of the capabilities we were able to accomplish easily with no coding even back then. Watch "Empowering Employees with Microsoft Office XP and SharePoint 2001" then head on over to the the SharePoint 2010 site where you can get a taste of the upcoming version to see just how far we have come.

*This video is best viewed in full screen mode. You can enlarge it by mousing over the video and selecting the expand symbol in the lower right corner of the video.

To learn more about SharePoint 2010 and to see how far SharePoint has come check out:

Michael Gannotti is a Technology Specialist for the Microsoft Corporation and the author of the blog SocialMedia Talk. You can also find him on Facebook and Twitter.

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    January 07, 2010
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    January 08, 2010
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