[SPC09] Day One: Keynote

Today the HUGE information stream began flowing, starting with a keynote by Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and SharePoint directors Jeff Teper and Tom Rizzo.

I’ll summarize the main points of the keynote.

• SharePoint 2010 Public Beta will be launched in November 2009. The RTM version is to follow in the first half of 2010 together with Office 2010
• SharePoint can now be installed on Windows Vista or Windows 7 for development
• Visual Studio 2010 (beta available) fully supports SharePoint 2010 development
• Windows SharePoint Services 4.0 will now be called SharePoint 2010 Foundation and will include more features (Business Data Connectivity, for instance)
• Office 2010 adds Web Edit capabilities for Office files stored in SharePoint, without opening them in the client applications
• SharePoint Workspace will let you work offline and sync the changes (even the external data)
• SharePoint document management now include document sets and farm-wide taxonomy (Managed Metadata Service)
• Metadata-driven navigation and tagging
• Large lists are now throttled and millions of items can be stored in them
• Business Intelligence is now enhanced with SQL Server PowerPivots (that now allow Excel and Excel Services to manage millions of rows seamlessly) and PerformancePoint Services
• Visio Services and Access Services are added
• Silverlight Organization Chart Navigator and Media Player web part are available
• External content types now surface external data into the SharePoint lists with read and write access
• Pervasive AJAX: Dialogs, Ribbon, Notification Area, Status Bar
• REST-ful API for Lists and Excel Services
• SharePoint Online now use Sandboxed WSP solutions to run user code securely
• You can now stream multimedia content stored in SharePoint
• Multi-browser compatibility
• Multi-lingual interface
• Seamless on-premise, mixed and cloud deployment with the same administration
• PowerShell administration with 300+ cmdlets
• Logging data can now be surfaced in a database that you can extend (yes, the only database that MS will let us touch)
• Mobile access to SharePoint and Office data
• Revamped search with optional FAST integration

 
Entering the Keynote Room

Tom Rizzo introduces the keynote

Steve Ballmer during the keynote

 
SharePoint 2010 Search Licensing unveiled

FAST Search for SharePoint 2010 with rich and dynamic user interface

 
SharePoint 2010 Licensing, both on-premise and on-cloud

Steve Ballmer and Tom Rizzo answering the questions (Steve actually said “The right answer is YES, now what’s the REAL answer?”. Kind of a funny quote…)

SQL Server PowerPivot is presented

SharePoint 2010 Mobile Access in a mobile browser

SharePoint PowerShell cmdlets

There were funny moments during the keynote speech, I liked the joke about the “fruit company” (Apple, of course) when referring to multibrowser capabilities of SP2010.