Microsoft has unveiled the public beta of Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 and Microsoft Office 2010 at its SharePoint Conference.
The SharePoint Server 2010 includes deep office integration through social tagging, backstage integration and document life-cycle management, built-in support for rich media such as video, audio and Silverlight, and new SharePoint tools in Microsoft Visual Studio 2010.
According to the company, the SharePoint Server 2010 includes a new ribbon user interface that makes end users more productive and customisation of SharePoint sites easy.
The company said that the SharePoint Server 2010 contains new web content management features with built-in accessibility through Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0, multilingual support and one-click page layout, which enables anyone to access SharePoint Server sites.
In addition, Business Connectivity Services allow developers to connect capabilities to line-of-business data or web services in SharePoint Server and the Office client, Rich APIs and support for Silverlight, representational state transfer (REST) and Language-Integrated Query (LINQ), help developers to build applications on the SharePoint platform.
Other features of the SharePoint Server 2010 include Enterprise features in SharePoint Online such as Excel Services and InfoPath Forms Services, and addition of two new SharePoint SKUs for internet-facing sites, including an on-premises and hosted offer.
Steve ballmer, CEO of Microsoft, said: “By taming the overflow of information across systems and technologies, SharePoint enables organizations to thrive. SharePoint 2010 is the biggest and most important release of SharePoint to date. When paired with Microsoft Office 2010, SharePoint 2010 will transform efficiency by connecting workers across a single collaboration platform for business.”
Microsoft SharePoint 2010 is part of the next wave of Microsoft Office-related products, which includes Office 2010, Project 2010, Exchange Server 2010 and Visio 2010.
The public betas of Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010, Office 2010, Project 2010 and Visio 2010 will become available in November 2009. Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 will be available in the first half of 2010.
