What to Expect in SharePoint 2010

Microsoft’s Business Productivity Infrastructure product suite is truly exciting and should be looked forward to by any IT professionals. Exchange Server 2010 was released very recently. I’m very excited and looking forward to the release of Office Communications Server 2010 and of course, the other of much significance of them, the SharePoint Server 2010. SharePoint 2010 marks a significant upgrade to the SharePoint product. Here are the things that you should look forward to in the SharePoint 2010 release!

Hardware and Software Requirement

• SharePoint Server 2010 will be 64-bit only
• SharePoint Server 2010 will require 64-bit Windows Server 2008 or 64-bit Windows Server 2008 R2
• SharePoint Server 2010 will require 64-bit SQL Server 2008 or 64-bit SQL Server 2005.

New Editions

• Windows SharePoint Server (WSS) is replaced by the new SharePoint Foundation 2010
• Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) is now SharePoint Server 2010
• You can get SharePoint 2010 in Standard or Enterprise Editions, for Intranet or Internet/Extranet Scenarios (http://sharepoint2010.microsoft.com/product/editions/Pages/default.aspx)

FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint

• o This includes all the search features and integration capabilities of SharePoint Server 2010 and adds deep platform flexibility and scale and enhanced content processing capabilities.
• o You can deploy FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint across multiple servers to meet demanding requirements for redundancy, performance and capacity. It can be scaled among the following axes: document volume, query volume and processing power for content, query, and results. Deployment, configuration and management take place through user interfaces, Windows PowerShell cmdlets, XML configuration files and command-line operations. (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee781286(office.14).aspx)
• o FAST Search technology was acquired by Microsoft from Fast Search & Transfer company in Norway. (http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2008/jan08/01-08FastSearchPR.mspx)

Usage Reporting and Logging

• SharePoint 2010 includes a new and extensible database designed to support usage reporting, logging and custom reports.

Visio Services

• Visio Services in Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 is a service application that lets users share and view Microsoft Visio Web drawings. The service also enables data-connected Microsoft Visio 2010 Web drawings to be refreshed and updated from various data sources. (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee663485(office.14).aspx)

Enhanced Collaboration Features

• Social tagging, bookmarks, notes, a new group authentication feature (people management and authorization by distribution list), blogs, wikis and merging of calendars from Exchange Server and SharePoint 2010 calendar are the things you should look forward to in SharePoint 2010 collaboration.

Best Practices Analyzer

• BPA is a customizable feature that will run jobs to check your environments health, provide guidance in implementations and troubleshooting, then list the issues it finds along with fixes for those issues to help you solve them

Enhanced SharePoint Designer 2010

• SharePoint Designer 2010 is the tool of choice for the rapid development of SharePoint applications. Using SharePoint Designer, advanced users and developers alike can rapidly create SharePoint solutions in response to business needs. Advanced users can compose no-code solutions that encompass a variety of common scenarios, from collaborative sites and web publishing to Line-Of-Business data integration, business intelligence solutions, and human workflows, leveraging the building blocks available in SharePoint in an easy to use environment. In addition, developers can use SharePoint Designer 2010 to get a quick start on SharePoint development projects. (http://sharepoint2010.microsoft.com/product/related-technologies/Pages/SharePoint-Designer-2010.aspx)

Browser Support

• Internet Explorer 6.0 is NOT supported!
• Support for XHTML 1.0 compliant browsers
• Internet Explorer 8.0 and 7.0
• Firefox 3.x
• Safari 3.x

Beta version can be downloaded for you to try it. But if I were you, I’ll watch out for the release of SharePoint Server 2010 in a few weeks!