SharePoint 2010 Released to Manufacturing

Several days ago, SharePoint 2010 and Office 2010 were released to manufacturing. The bits became available for download on MSDN and TechNet late last week. The products will be generally available on or after May 12 – which coincides with the official announcement of the release out of Redmond, WA. We will be watching the announcement live at 10:00 a.m. Central Time with the Evansville SharePoint Users Group at the Oaklyn Library at the corner of Lynch and Oak Hill in Evansville.

So it is decision time for most people now. Often, many companies tend to play it safe and not be early adopters. With SharePoint 2010, the trend seems to be changing. Microsoft attributes that to two things: an abundance of new features that the SharePoint community has been seeking and a highly successful beta testing campaign. Those who have been involved with the beta tests (us included) really like what they see. In his article titled “Chomping at the SharePoint Bit,” Jeffrey Schwartz writes of this phenomenon in the April 2010 issue of Redmond Partner Channel magazine.

The decision to go/no-go, however, is not as simple for some as it is for others. SharePoint 2010 will require a little more horsepower on your servers and is only available in 64-bit. If you are currently running SharePoint and/or SQL Server in a 32-bit environment, this will require a little more thoughtful planning. Keller Schroeder is among a select group of Microsoft Partners known as SharePoint Deployment Planning Services providers. If you are weighing the pros and cons of upgrading to SharePoint 2010 – or if you are looking at implementing it from scratch – contact us to learn more about how we can help.