Guest Author: Doug Ware
Elumenotion, LLC

On Sunday I flew to Minneapolis to film the first SharePoint 2010 video for AppDev. The course is entitled Exploring SharePoint 2010 and it’s as complete an overview of the 2010 stack as I could reasonably fit into 10 hours. Amazingly, SharePoint 2010 is such a deep and wide platform that there are some very interesting and exciting features that I won’t be talking about because there isn’t enough time!

Over the last few months I’ve gotten deep into 2010 by building the Real Nice Rugs sandbox application, writing the new course, and doing pilot work for clients. As the owner of a consulting business I am often asked when and if a client should move to 2010. My general answers are:

• If the major uses are collaboration and search, wait until the new bits are completely stable, but start learning and planning now.
• Do not undertake new enterprise content management or taxonomy projects on 2007, but wait for 2010.
• If the initiative is business process automation/workflow and a third-party add-on is not in use, wait until the new bits are completely stable, but start learning and planning now.
• If the initiative is Business Intelligence/Information Delivery, adopt SharePoint Server 2010 as soon as possible.

The BI components in SharePoint Server 2010 in conjunction with SQL Server 2008 R2 Reporting Services and PowerPivot are amazingly, stupefying, unqualifiedly incredible.

Business Intelligence Features in SharePoint Server 2010

You can:

• Publish Access 2010 databases and their reports to SharePoint 2010
• Create Data Sources and Data Views to a wide variety of data stores with SharePoint Designer 2010
• Create Charts with the Chart Web Part
• Visualize Data with Visio Services
• Use Business Connectivity Services to expose external content types and lists
• Create reports using a wide array of data sources including SharePoint lists with SQL Server Reporting Services 2008 R2 Report Builder
• Create dashboards with PerformancePoint Services and Dashboard Designer
• Provide self-service analytics with PowerPivot add-ons for Excel and SharePoint / Excel Services
• Expose just about everything to other applications with Web services, REST, and ODATA

I cover most of this in the new course. I’ll post an outline and announce availability soon.

All of these features are cool by themselves, but collectively they comprise what I believe is the most complete and powerful delivery platform for business data to date. As word gets out, I fully expect that this will drive adoption of SharePoint Server 2010 in the short-term even for companies that decide to take a slow approach to upgrading to 2010 for the traditional strengths of existing 2007 installations.

Guest Author: Doug Ware
Elumenotion, LLC

Doug Ware is a SharePoint expert, the creator of AppDev’s popular series of SharePoint 2007 courses, and the author of Elumenotion SharePoint Skinner – the ultimate SharePoint branding tool. Doug is the founder of Elumenotion, a SharePoint training and consulting firm located in Atlanta, Georgia and has completed numerous SharePoint implementations cover a wide variety of businesses. Doug is also the leader of the Atlanta .NET User Group and is a frequent speaker at SharePoint Saturday, code camps and other events.