The Shattered Sky

Microsoft’s 2010 June 18, 2010

Today I attended a small Microsoft Tech Briefing. There, I got a look at SharePoint 2010, Office 2010, Exchange 2010 and Silverlight 4. Very interesting stuff.

This is a short blog entry because frankly I’m pretty tired. It’s been one of those long, long, LONG days.

SharePoint 2010

• Great use of the now-standard Ribbon interface
• Web apps to edit documents online – great touch for quick edits. I also see this as a great tool for letting users work from home without having to go the VPN route.
• Integrated organization chart complete with reporting hierarchy, blogs and smart display of positions. Scenario: I want information on a topic. I search it, find a blog entry. I want help so I contact the person’s supervisor. Person is not available, but I am already presented with others at a similar level to my original person who may have similar knowledge. I’ll talk to one of them instead.
• Murphy’s Law witnessed in action: Presenter changed the SharePoint theme. The server promptly restarted itself. Whoopsie.

Exchange 2010 and Office 2010

• I feel like the Office 2007 interface looked sleeker somehow, but that is not to say the revised look is at all shabby. I like how easy it is to print documents etc. Farewell, print dialog.
• Integrated voice messages is nice but you know what I really, really liked? The fact that when typing up a message, Outlook will check and let the sender know if the recipient is out of office before the mail is ever even sent. Say goodbye to those “Out of Office” messages – now you will know before you hit the send button.
• Saving documents directly to a SharePoint site or to a SkyDrive account.
• Maybe it’s time I dug out my Office 2010 beta and meddled around again. I don’t think the trial period is over yet…
• Exchange on the Cloud. Nothing more to say there. It seems to be a great idea and should save a lot of companies the stress of an internal mail server.

Silverlight 4

• Very powerful. I honestly have not given it enough credit. I really don’t know what else to say here but it plays its part in the whole SharePoint scheme of things and allows for creation of some pretty slick Web Apps.

I really should have typed this up when I have more energy but say what…if I wait it will probably never get posted, so however it is there you have it. I have been liking Microsoft’s new direction in recent times and what I saw today cements that. I like open source as much as the next geek but hey, credit is due where credit is due.