Current SharePoint Users - What to do! What to do!
Like many of you, I watched with interest as Microsoft started to lay out the details of the next version of SharePoint. There are several great posts that highlight many of the amazing new features (Here's a good one: http://msmvps.com/anguslogan/archive/2005/09/18/66822.aspx). The post that struck me as the most thought provoking was Patrick Tisseghem's (http://blog.u2u.info/DottextWeb/patrick/archive/2005/09/17/9172.aspx). Patrick got to the same spot that I did... for current SharePoint users, what now? It seems that Microsoft has really listened and is preparing to fill in several of the holes we have found in V2. But, do we stop building portals and collaboration sites until Office 12 is shipped? I think not!
The excitement around Office 12 and SharePoint V3 reminds me of the early .NET days. It was going to, and in some ways did, change the (technology) world. The reality is that adoption was slow to start and there are a number of organizations (some of them are my clients) that still mange to function day-to-day with VB6!...
Literally, in every meeting I went to last week someone asked about Office 12. I got several “I want it now!” responses upon giving some of the new details. The reality is that “now” is not possible. Office 12 is a year from shipping and probably at least 18 months from hitting most organizations. Remember, IT departments actually have to plan for these things! I'm telling folks that they won't see Office 12 on their desktops until early 2007. In the technology space, that's a long way away. I am encouraging my clients and contacts to continue to build with the current SharePoint technologies, taking full advantage of the features that exist today. All the business reasons to build a corporate portal, collaborative virtual team sites, and document-centric extranets have not changed. While today it makes less sense to build a custom solution for things like document-level security (it's there in V3!), it is still a very good thing to deliver timely and accurate information through your portal or site. Office 12 will be very cool; no doubt. The PDC details last week showed that Microsoft is moving in the right direction with this product line and they truly are committed to the Information Worker. It will be fun to watch Office 12 evolve. It will also be important to understand what it will and will not do so we can continue to build with the current SharePoint tools and be in good position for a clean and (hopefully) non-major upgrade...