Love it or hate it, SharePoint continues to have a major impact on ECM. So much so, that even natural competitors like EMC Documentum still find ways to partner with Microsoft around SharePoint. With a new version of SharePoint, dubbed SharePoint 2010, due out this May, the impact on the AIIM Info360 Conference is perhaps even greater this year than in past years. To that end, the conference organizers have decided to devote a whole conference track to the new version. 

The activities scheduled for the conference include:

• A general session with Ryan Duguid, who is the SharePoint 2010 product manager.
• A whole session track with 14 sessions devoted exclusively to SharePoint 2010--ranging from a broad overview to more niche areas such as search, business intelligence and knowledge management. These sessions run all three days and will be lead by Microsoft employees, analysts, partners and customers, so you should get a broad view of the product if you are looking to learn more about it.

Some people complain about SharePoint's governance problems. In fact, it's so easy to create a site, that many companies have literally thousands of sites throughout the organization. That situation can be a governance nightmare. Microsoft does attempt to address this in SharePoint 2010 with better administrative tools to track and, if needed, shut down dormant sites.

Chances are people are using SharePoint in your organization. It pays to understand what this product and its extensive partner ecosystem can do. While critics say that SharePoint doesn't do many things well, it does provide a lot of basic functionality for content management and collaboration. If your company finds these tools deficient, you can always use a partner tool to help fill in a hole.

Whatever your level of interest, SharePoint 2010 is getting heavy play at the conference this year and you can dip in as much or as little as you want to learn more about it and what impact (if any) this latest release will have on your organization.

Related Articles:
AIIM 2010 Datebook
HP launches updated SharePoint governance tool
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Some other SharePoint 2010 tidbits
The rise of the social in SharePoint 2010
Microsoft opens SharePoint 2010 Beta