Sharepoint Server 2010 - at our doorstep

If you are into SharePoint then you must have heard a big vibe going on around the world now days about SharePoint Server 2010. Microsoft recently announced a sneak peek at the SharePoint Server 2010. It can be found in the SharePoint website at - http://sharepoint.microsoft.com/2010/Sneak_Peek/Pages/default.aspx

Did you notice that I have used the term SharePoint Server 2010 and not Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2010? No? Ok, now you did. Well, yes. Microsoft has shortened the name from our household name MOSS to Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010. So, April 14 onwards 'Office' is no longer an official part of SharePoint acronym. Well, there is no new acronym - MSS 2010; as the acronym MSS is already taken up by Microsoft Search Services. As Microsoft says, "Just remember SharePoint is SharePoint is SharePoint". Now, what led Microsoft to go ahead with this change? The answer as any one will guess is simple. The word 'Office' is generally associated by people to Microsoft Office suite of client side products and SharePoint is more of a server side product. Microsoft wants to re-establish the 'Office' name to its legacy document editing and management suite of products. Microsoft believes that no one should worry about the word 'Office' being taken out of SharePoint just like they did not worry when the word 'Portal' was taken out of this portal product in 2007. Hmm, that is quite interesting and goes hand in hand with Microsoft's ideology of product rebranding.

Now does this make you think that you are well prepared for Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010? Well, you have not seen the new recommended infrastructure requirements yet. When we talk SharePoint Server 2010, 64 should be the number in our mind as: - SharePoint Server 2010 will be 64-bit only. - It will require 64-bit Windows Server 2008 or 64-bit Windows Server 2008 R2. - It will require 64-bit SQL server 2008 or 64-bit SQL server 2005. This hard decision was a result of performance tests and real world experience that Microsoft had heard from its customers who were using 32-bit machines. Microsoft believes that the performance and scalability of SharePoint server can be greatly increased on 64-bit machines.

As per the browser compatibility is concerned, Microsoft has made it clear that to get optimum performance, and the best possible experience across multiple browsers, they are targeting their development effort towards standard based browsers (XHTML 1.0 compliant) including IE7, IE8 and Firefox3.x running on Windows Operating System. Besides they are also planning for an increased level of compatibility with Firefox 3.x and Safari3.x on Non-Windows OS. Due to this focus interest, IE6 will not be a support browser for Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010. Though, users would still be able to use IE6 to view the content, a standards based browser would be required to author content.

However, SharePoint Server 2010 has in store its own bundle of goodies to share. Microsoft has recently announced few of its new features such as:
- Silverlight webpart
- LINQ in SharePoint
- Client Object Model
- Business Connectivity Services
- Visual Studio 2010 SharePoint tools
- Developer Dashboard just to name a few..

As soon as SharePoint is ready for Beta, developers all round the globe will be eagerly waiting to get a hand on this third generation web development platform... As Microsoft truly said, the next generation of Microsoft's suite of products is going to revolutionize the way people think..!!