Last month I attended Microsoft’s SharePoint 2014 Conference and it really got me thinking about the transformations taking place in IT and business and what that means to our customers.
The key note address stressed that we are undergoing a transformation in which technology is changing the way we live and work. All the speakers emphasized how we are working together and how we can do that more effectively to achieve our business goals more efficiently. Microsoft had some impressive numbers to share – Office 365 is now a 1.5 billion dollar business with 60% of the Fortune 500 companies adopting it and SharePoint has seen 500% growth in users.
Social, mobile, and cloud were the buzzwords I heard most often at the conference and all are key to SharePoint. SharePoint is a web collaboration platform and family of software products that delivers document management, collaboration, product management, business intelligence, and social platforms. SharePoint is used for collaboration, file sharing, and web publishing among other things.
It is available for on premise use (SharePoint Server) or online (as part of the cloud version of Office 365). SharePoint is a truly hybrid solution that can be implemented seamlessly in the cloud and on premise. You can use SharePoint from your PC, tablet, or phone (Windows, Apple, or Android) making it a perfect solution for companies embracing BYOD and mobility.
Some of the new SharePoint features were highlighted at the conference. OneDrive for Business is now fully integrated with SharePoint allowing you to access, share, and collaborate on documents that are stored on OneDrive. OneDrive for Business is now a standalone product that allows businesses to choose between the MS Cloud and their private cloud for their storage and collaboration needs.
Another innovative product that SharePoint has fully integrated in this release is Yammer. Yammer offers a true social collaboration product for enterprises. It operates a lot like the social media products you are used to like Facebook and Twitter. Yammer brings newsfeeds and another level of active collaboration to SharePoint. Microsoft also promised at the conference to continue to offer the same enhancements and support for both cloud and on premise versions of SharePoint and Office 365, thus illustrating their understanding that many companies are choosing hybrid cloud deployments.
SharePoint is a really useful workplace platform for companies looking for a way to achieve business goals more quickly and efficiently. Employees can work together more easily and goals are met more quickly with this level of collaboration taking place. In order to get SharePoint working for you and your company you need a trusted partner to help with the planning, building, deploying, and managing of the SharePoint platform. That’s where AdvizeX comes in. We have experts in Microsoft and can offer you an end-to-end solution for SharePoint.
We will help you plan, design, build, deploy, and manage SharePoint you so that you don’t have to have the expertise in house to reap the benefits of this great product. Like Microsoft, we are in the business of teaching our customers how to do business more effectively. Microsoft has invested in this area to be the market leader; it is proven that people are using their products and with such a high adoption rate there is only room to grow from here. ▪