SharePoint 2010 big presence at AIIM 2010

Microsoft had a huge presence at AIIM 2010, showing off all aspects of SharePoint 2010, its upcoming content management and collaboration platform due to be released next month. Conference organizers provided Microsoft with its own track, proving the reach SharePoint has. The release of SharePoint 2010, whatever you think of SharePoint, is having a huge impact on the industry. That is largely due to the huge partner eco-system that Microsoft has built around the product over the years, which helps fill in product gaps and drive product innovation.

Even Cyrus Mistry of Google gave Microsoft kudos for the way it listens to its partners. "Microsoft does a fantastic job of this. Listen to your partners about things you really need." That's high praise and SharePoint does seem to have included many of the features and back-end management functions customers (and other related parties, no doubt) have been clamoring for over the past few years.

It is precisely this partner system that creates a whole economic powerhouse around SharePoint providing business for many, many different companies. One such company I spoke to was Atalasoft, which has developed a very sophisticated document viewing application for SharePoint that enables users to see a full preview of a document instantly. The product also includes the ability to work with the documents in a document management interface.

Atalasoft is but one example of literally hundreds of small companies that have built products and businesses around a need in SharePoint. The SharePoint pavilion was full of many other examples, but it's not just the partners, it's also the platform, which makes it easy for end users to put a website or collaboration site together without IT intervention. This simplicity is a blessing and a curse, but Microsoft says it has addressed better back-end site management in 2010.

SharePoint is extremely popular, and its influence on the industry as a whole is undeniable. If you doubted that for any reason, AIIM 2010 had to convince you.

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