Syrinx is here in force at the Microsoft SharePoint Conference 2009 in Las Vegas, NV. The Mandalay Bay is packed with over 6,000 people attending the conference from all over the world. The morning was spent in a keynote with Steve Ballmer and a demo of the new SharePoint 2010 capabilities. Highlights for those that cannot be here:

• SharePoint 2010 Beta release scheduled for next month (November 2009)
• Final release sometime in H1 2010
• Windows 7 and Vista will be supported for developer platforms, and there is a developer dashboard built in that helps with profiling code. Downside: New developer tools are designed to work with 2010 only, not MOSS 2007.
• SharePoint Server is 64 bit only
• Better cloud support, allow uploading code and customizing SharePoint Online, and to mix and match cloud and “on premises” installs
• Many more SKU’s in this release, four quadrants of products based on Intranet/Internet and cloud/on premises
• Great demo’s of Access Services, Visio Services, SharePoint Workspaces (the new ‘Groove” for working disconnected), FAST Search, BCS (the new BDC – now with read/write capabilities and auto-generated CRUD operations for back-end LOB systems), PowerPivot (super Excel – handle 100M rows in one spreadsheet QUICKLY), co-editing of documents by more than one user at a time, “Insights’ the new PerformancePoint
• Scalability – 1M+ items in a list/folder, 10M+ in a document library, 100’s of millions across a farm.
• Better ability to create taxonomy or informal tagging to build a “folksonomy”
• PowerShell admin ability with 500+ commandlets shipped at release
• “Visual Upgrade” to run your 2007 to 2010 migration and allow users to cut over on a page by page basis as they are ready (Unanswered question – does this just apply to look and feel/chrome or does this affect web parts, etc? What don’t you see if you do not turn on the 2010 version?)
• Streaming video is supported – make your own “ShareTube” and control bandwidth, allow lookahead, etc.
• Better deployment capabilities, including the ability to build a solution in SharePoint Designer and have it move to different lists/libraries, or to upsize it to be worked on in Visual Studio.

Some General SharePoint product differentiators and customer feedback were mentioned

• Customers are responding very well to a platform that allows them to solve so many needs – there really is not a competing product that does everything SharePoint does or gives you the value it does
• SharePoint is cost effective by saving money three ways – less for licensing than trying to assemble several other competing products to do the same things, less to implement as it gives you so much out of the box, less to maintain and support as you have one platform to cover the many needs and one admin/developer skill set
• Favorite first projects: Intranets, Dashboards, Project Management portals, IT Service portals, moving paper-based LOB systems online, Content Management
• Microsoft is betting on the platform in a big way. Customers are as well. Great sessions from clients Tyson Foods and Global Crossing on their early SharePoint 2010 experiences. The Office integration done by Tyson to solve real LOB issues was exceptionally impressive.

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