Guest Speaker at Butler Group Strategy Briefing

Just a quick note that Matthew and I will be at the Butler Group Strategy Briefing on June 23rd. The topic is "Document and Records Management - Controlling Information Risk and Aiding Productivity".

I will be standing in for Microsoft as guest speaker talking about SharePoint DM around the Linklaters / Kinstellar case study. Agenda for the briefing is here (my slot is 14.05):
http://www.butlergroup.com/briefingAgenda.asp?mcr=DRM&scr=DRM230608

We will both hang around there the whole day to learn from the other vendors, and hear more about what companies are looking for when it comes to RM, ECM and DM.

Gabriel

How to protect SharePoint 2007?

Well, there are a number of options, including using STSADM, backing up 12hive manually and so forth. There are 3rd party tools, and there are PowerShell scripts.

What fewer realise is that there is an alternative from Microsoft themselves called DPM, or Data Protection Manager. We use it in-house and have experienced only a few glitches - but nothing to major. My opinion is that it generally functions well and if you don't have backup and restore tools and procedures in place already for SharePoint then it is well worth a look.

But I am not a backup or operations kinda expert, so I cannot tell you if DPM is "the best out there" or even if it is "enterprise level", but I came across this blog here from Margo on "To the SharePoint" blog which was published a few days ago. They also published this whitepaper: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd252713.aspx

Enjoy...

SharePoint Server 2010 Preliminary System Requirements

In case you missed it, Microsoft SharePoint Team Blog announced the "SharePoint Server 2010 Preliminary System Requirements" here: http://blogs.msdn.com/sharepoint/archive/2009/05/07/announcing-sharepoint-server-2010-preliminary-system-requirements.aspx

My 10 sec summary:
- 64bit only
- Windows Server 2008 only
- Windows SQL Server 2005 or 2008 only
- Browser support for: standards based browsers (XHTML 1.0 compliant) including Internet Explorer 7, Internet Explorer 8 and Firefox 3.x. running on Windows Operating Systems
- No more IE6 (thank you!!)... it's history! See http://support.microsoft.com/gp/lifepolicy

SharePoint Server 2010

Yes, it finally became official (April 14th it was), the baby will be called "SharePoint 2010".

MS are dropping "MOSS" as Office is no longer part of the official name for SharePoint.

I like this extract from the Microsoft SharePoint Team blog: "Don’t try to acronym Microsoft SharePoint Server to MSS since MSS is already taken by Microsoft Search Server. Just remember, SharePoint is SharePoint is SharePoint."

So, what I will try to do here, is maintain a list of interesting posts/entries that I or colleagues spot, or add our own comments, as things about SharePoint 2010 starts to become clear.

Next Wave of Microsoft Office Products Will Redefine How People Work
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/features/2009/Apr09/04-15Office2010.mspx

Microsoft SharePoint Team Blog:
http://blogs.msdn.com/sharepoint/archive/2009/04/14/microsoft-sharepoint-14-is-now-microsoft-sharepoint-2010.aspx (I think this is the most official Microsoft announcement?)

Bink.nu
http://bink.nu/news/microsoft-brands-office-2010-releases-exchange-beta.aspx

CMS Watch having a rant at the naming:
http://www.cmswatch.com/Trends/1572-SharePoint-2010-Brand-Confusion

SharePoint Buzz blog....
http://www.sharepointbuzz.com/archive/tags/Microsoft%20SharePoint%20Server%202010/default.aspx
nice one about expected features of SharePoint 2010:
http://www.sharepointbuzz.com/archive/2008/11/11/upcoming-sharepoint-14-features.aspx

Announcing Service Pack 2 for Office SharePoint Server 2007 and WSS 3.0
http://blogs.msdn.com/sharepoint/archive/2009/04/28/announcing-service-pack-2-for-office-sharepoint-server-2007-and-windows-sharepoint-services-3-0.aspx
While this link to does directly give any clues to "what will be in SharePoint 2010" it does state that SP2 will be required for upgrades to SharePoint 2010, and it includes a number of improvements that appear to be "staging" the new release, including:
"A new preupgradecheck operation is added to stsadm tool. It can be used to scan your server farm to establish whether it is ready for upgrade to SharePoint Products and Technologies "14". It identifies issues that could present obstacles to the upgrade process. It checks for several SharePoint Products and Technologies "14" system requirements, including the presence of Microsoft® Windows Server® 2008 and a 64-bit hardware, and provides feedback and best practice recommendations for your current environment, together with information on how to resolve any issues that the tool discovers."
More to follow... (and let us know of any good SharePoint 2010 resources you may come across).

Microsoft SharePoint DM Case Study

It is always great when others want to know more about work we have done - somewhat flattering I guess ;-)

In this case the chaps from Microsoft had heard about our SharePoint Document Management project for Linklaters / Kinstellar. Seeing how the end result shows SharePoint's capabilities as a DM for a larger law firm, they have now turned this into a 2-page case study. You can read it here http://www.microsoft.com/casestudies/casestudy.aspx?casestudyid=4000003953 (written and published by Microsoft)

Or you can get a PDF version from here: www.clearpeople.com/ms-casestudy-sharepoint-dm (scroll down to the bottom somewhere I think)

If this topic interests you then you might also want to check out a recent blog entry here: http://thesharepointpeople.blogspot.com/2009/03/real-life-document-management-on.html

Enjoy!

New blog site added: http://tips4sharepoint.blogspot.com

We have added a new blog site on http://tips4sharepoint.blogspot.com/ .....

Sorry, but no prizes for guessing what it's for! Enjoy!