Deciphering the Microsoft Spin on SharePoint 2010

A Critical Analysis of Arpan Shah's Presentation on SharePoint Past, Present & Future at the Best Practice Conference in DC Today

The second biggest SharePoint conference of 2009 (deference to Microsoft's SharePoint Conference in Vegas in October) is underway here in Reston, Virginia.  As one of the most significant gatherings of SharePoint professionals before the big show in Vegas, I've been eager to see where Microsoft is with regard to positioning and talking points for SharePoint 2010.  More than almost any other company I know, Microsoft is great at managing the messaging around new products.  "Softies" excel at singing from the same page in the hymnal, and the choir is certainly getting warmed up in advance of this critical product release.  So what are the key themes that Arpan hit in today's address?

Hosted or Un-Hosted (You're supposed to think of the Quiznos "Toasted vs. Untoasted" campaign)

Microsoft critics are already lining up to suggest that SharePoint 2010 will not go far enough to move enterprise computing to "the Cloud".  Pundits will argue that SharePoint 2010 still relies too heavily on a client-server model that will be obsolete in a SaaS world.  Microsoft will be accused of not evolving SharePoint towards a cloud-based model, to protect the Microsoft Office cash cow.  To head off such criticism, Microsoft is leading with the message that customers may choose SharePoint "On Premise" or SharePoint Online.

Does it work?  I think so.  At least from a high level perspective, Microsoft can pretty genuinely claim that they are "hosting" agnostic.  SharePoint Online is available today and people are using it.  They have an answer for anyone who is impatient to move to the cloud, and that answer is "we're ready".  The devil may be in the details.  SharePoint Online is available in two flavors, "dedicated" and "shared" or "multi-tenant".  The shared version comes with some restrictions that may limit adoption, such as "no custom code" (e.g. your favorite Bamboo Web Parts).  Organizations that want a hosted solution AND functionality beyond SharePoint out-of-the-box will have to go with a dedicated server, which will no doubt be significantly more expensive.  Still, the complete range of options are there, so I think the positioning is pretty strong.

Facilitating Adoption

As Arpan started his discussion of Microsoft's investment in facilitating adoption of SharePoint 2010, I assumed that he was going to focus his remarks on promises that migration and upgrade would be smoother and more seamless than what happened with SharePoint 2007.  However, the headline that he punched hardest in this category was support for non-IE browsers, including Firefox and Safari.  Arpan went through a couple of new features with SharePoint 2010 in Internet Explorer and then duplicated those same actions using Firefox.

Personally I am a little underwhelmed by support for Firefox and Safari as a major feature.  While it's true that I still prefer Firefox over Internet Explorer, it would surprise me to hear that the lack of such support has been a major objection to the adoption of MOSS.  I could certainly be wrong, I guess it's just surprising.  Google Chrome was not named as a supported browswer for SharePoint 2010 today, it will be interesting to see if that changes before launch.

Also touted as an adoption facilitator was an enhanced experience for mobile users.  Not a lot of detail here, but probably significant in that it means Microsoft sales reps are hearing increasing demand for mobile solutions.

Enhanced UX (UX is geek for "User Experience" or interface design)

SharePoint 2010 is definitely striking to look at compared to current versions of SharePoint.  Gone is the drab blue and gray default theme most of us know so well.  The SharePoint 2010 sites that Arpan demonstrated were bright, crisp and appealing.  Arpan showed off some very well executed new functionality as well, including in-line WYSIWYG style editing of any SharePoint page and one-click publishing of images.  The overarching theme is that usability has been a major area of "investment", and that SharePoint 2010 will feature an interface on par with the best of the Web.

Does it work?  Probably, but the X factor here is "the Ribbon"

SharePoint 2010 uses the "fluent UI" first introduced with Office 2007.  Basically this means that the navigational options presented to the user change based on where the user is or what the user is doing.  The theory is that a fluent UI is beneficial for users and provides expedited access to the commands or controls most likely to be needed in a given situation.  The reality is that this is a huge change for users from the persistent UI of the past.  Personally, I had a very hard time adapting to the ribbon when I first sat down to work with Office 2007.  It was extremely disruptive to my experience, and caused a great deal of frustration as I sought out functional controls that had been moved.  It took me a week or two to re-locate key functionality in Office 2007 and get back to my previous level of productivity.  Honestly, I'm still not over it, and still rely on "Alt+" keyboard shortcuts to get a certain functions.  As far as I know, there aren't any equivalent keyboard shortcuts available for browser-based functionality, so that safety net will not be available to users of SharePoint 2010.

My personal opinion is that a fluent UI doesn't work.  In my experience, end users hate change, and the ribbon represents a very aggressive paradigm shift.  I predict this causes problems, or at least creates opportunities for someone (yes, someone like Bamboo) to offer an add on that "unfluences" the SharePoint 2010 UX. 

Extensibility, Interoperability and Manageability

First in this section I would call out interoperability as one of the "Wow!" moments of this SharePoint 2010 preview.  The demonstrated interoperability between Office clients like Word and SharePoint shows extremely well.  Dynamically populating Office documents with data from SharePoint sparks the imagination and gives great credibility to the claims that SharePoint 2010 will be a fully integrated business productivity platform.  Thumbs up, no caveats, this is functionality I look foward to using.  Access & Visio were referenced directly, Word was demonstrated, assuming similar integrations with Excel and all other components of the Office suite, this looks like a powerful leap forward for the platform.

With regard to extensibility, there was a healthy amount of time devoted to describing enhancements to the Business Data Catalog (BDC) which will be renamed Business Connectivity Services (BCS) in the 2010 release.  Arpan revealed that SharePoint Designer and Visual Studio will both have capabilities that enable users to create connections between data sources external to SharePoint.  The headline on BCS is that connectivity with external data sources is bi-directional.  Update the underlying database and see the change reflected in SharePoint, real time.  Update the data via SharePoint, and changes are made directly to the underlying data source.

Under the manageability heading, a major re-work of Central Administration was showcased.  Enhanced reporting and a better organized admin console was well received by the crowd.

Across the board, I think these points will resonate very well with shops that are already using SharePoint.  Microsoft seems to have gone after existing pain points in the current version of SharePoint and snuffed them out very directly.  I think these themes will be less effective in attracting new SharePoint customers, but should help the effort to migrate and upsell the existing base.

Finally, the new tagline for SharePoint is a good general indicator of how Microsoft intends to move forward with the platform.

"SharePoint 2010 is the business collaboration platform for the enterprise and the Web." 

Parsing out the new tagline, "and the Web" are the words that jump off the page.  I think this phrase serves double duty, calling out the fact that SharePoint is gaining popularity as a platform for Web facing sites and applications (as opposed to just portals behind the firewall), and speaks to SharePoint's future as a business productivity platform for the cloud.

So, is there a good story around SharePoint 2010?

As a Microsoft partner focused on SharePoint, I walked away feeling pretty bullish about SharePoint 2010.  I'm eager to see it and play with it.  There are new capabilities and improvements here that appeal to me as an end user.  I think there is a compelling value proposition that will bring new customers into the SharePoint domain.  Microsoft has done a good job, and focused on important issues.  I hope the product is as good as the messaging.

As a pure Microsoft observer my snarky comment might be, "What took you so long?"  Seriously, Microsoft needs to be more agile and improve their ability to bring new features to market faster than once every four years with a complete overhaul of SharePoint and Office.  I'm sure there are plenty of SharePoint administrators out there who are glad they don't have a constant stream of service packs and feature upgrades to deal with, but SharePoint has lagged dangerously behind the Web at large in UX and extensibility.  With Google, IBM, Cisco and a world full of second tier players targeting Microsoft's renewed dominance in the enterprise, they're going to have to pick up the pace to stay ahead.

Congrats and thanks to Arpan for an excellent presentation.