I feel like I have been on a long journey of sorts with SharePoint. One filled with love and one sometimes filled with frustration (can anyone say SharePoint Designer?). With constant change and always moving forward, SharePoint has been a huge part of my career. While the product itself never really seemed to matter to me, since my focus for me has always been on building powerful business solutions – I was always excited when new methods, tools or product features were released that made my like easier. I remember waiting with such excitement for the new product to ship, ready to start a migration project so that we could take advantage of all the new things! When Office 365 came about, that all seemed to change – I was then excited about new features and waiting anxiously for them to show up in my First Release tenant. From the Video Portal to Groups, I was always excited to see what was coming next, in fact, I am still excited and follow it all pretty closely!
Things are a bit different now, with the release of SharePoint 2016. Instead of only looking at new features and configurations you have to ask yourself – what is available on-prem and what is limited to Office 365 and even still what can be done with a hybrid configuration. There are many more questions this time around and many more angles to consider. This is why the Future of SharePoint event on May 4th is so exciting to me – for the first time in a long time it seems we have an event that is just focused on SharePoint and the future of things. The event promises to provide a clear overview of the “new vision” for SharePoint across on-prem, Office 365 and Hybrid configurations. Instead of simply being focused on one or the other – this even promises to bring things together. The event is being broadcast live from San Francisco and will also include some on-demand sessions that will provide a deeper dive into new innovations.
When it comes to business tools in today’s market there seems to be so many different options and ways to do things – things are constantly changing and new tools are always being developed. Many times I have heard people comment that “SharePoint is dead” or that “new innovation has stopped”. I can’t disagree more! Microsoft has is a big player in this space, just take a look at some of the recent innovations such as Planner and now Microsoft Flow. The way Microsoft is deploying might have changed and the way we consume the tools might be different, but I really think that the best it still yet to come! I know the team at Microsoft has been working very hard and I believe they are going to show us some things later this week that we will look to each other and say “I had NO idea THAT was coming!”. I fully expect a few WOW moments and I expect to leave the event feeling like an old friend (SharePoint) is back in the center of the conversation again.
I hope that all of my readers have registered for the event already, but if you haven’t there is still time! Just head over to the registration page. I will be attending the event and filling Twitter up with my thoughts – so expect a noisy few hours from me! I think the future for SharePoint is bright and I can’t wait to hear what Jeff Teper is going to share with us this week! I promise you that this the not to miss event of the year for SharePoint – so do yourself a favor and register now!
Jennifer Ann Mason 