What’s so new between SharePoint 2007, 2010 and 2013?
Wondering if you should upgrade to SharePoint 2013? Join the crowd. A fair bit has already been written about the many improved features and capabilities of this much-anticipated release.
But with these improvements also comes the single most common question that accompanies any new release: Is it worth upgrading, and if so, when?
If you’ve just recently upgraded to SharePoint 2010, are the improvements in 2013 good enough to warrant back-to-back upgrades? And if you’re still running SharePoint 2007, is 2013 worth making the intermediate upgrade to SharePoint 2010 now?
We’ve been getting these questions a lot lately. Not only from our existing Hosted SharePoint 2007 and 2010 customers, but from many IT pros contemplating shifting more of their organization’s IT needs to the cloud as part of their overall strategy.
We recently sat down with Philippe Pepin, one of our in-house SharePoint admins to get his take. Here’s what he had to say.
Takeaway: When it comes to document management and collaboration, SharePoint can do just about anything you need it to—given the right infrastructure and applications. In this series of 3 articles, we offer SMBs tips for finding the right SharePoint solution for improving productivity and lowering costs.
SharePoint integrates with the Microsoft Office suite
Efficient document and team management can make or break a project. That’s why collaborative software like SharePoint has become an indispensable tool for so many organizations. SharePoint is a web-based platform that makes it easy for organizations to manage teams and projects, and allow employees to securely share and collaborate on documents, ideas and more. SharePoint’s popularity is due to the fact that unlike many other solutions, it can be highly customized. It’s also relatively affordable.
Once you’ve nailed down those decisions, it’s time to look at whether it makes more sense to keep your SharePoint solution in-house or entrust it to the hosting experts.
Takeaway: When it comes to document management and collaboration, SharePoint can do just about anything you need it to—given the right infrastructure and applications. In this series of 3 articles, we offer tips for finding the right SharePoint solution for improving productivity and lower costs.
Which edition of SharePoint is right for your organization? It depends on what you want to do with the solution.
In a recent article, we looked at why SharePoint’s flexible platform is a better choice for most companies that need a customized collaborative and management solution. Missed it? You can read it here.
In a nutshell, SharePoint is powerful and secure web-based platform that allows employees to access, share, collaborate and manage documents, teams, projects and much more. Unlike many other collaborative solutions, SharePoint can be tailored to your organization’s specific needs with the right architecture and applications. It’s also very cost effective, which is largely why SharePoint has become the most popular choice for most SMBs.
So let’s say you’ve looked at all the different options and have decided that your organization could benefit from all the management and productivity boosting features of SharePoint. You’re now ready to migrate (or upgrade to the enhanced functionalities of a more recent version).
The question is: Do you choose SharePoint Foundation, Standard or Enterprise?
Here’s how you can fully benefit from SharePoint. Part 1 of 3.
Takeaway: When it comes to document management and collaboration, SharePoint can do just about anything you need it to—given the right infrastructure and applications. In this series of 3 articles, we offer SMBs tips for finding the right SharePoint solution for improving productivity and lower costs.
Ever worked on the wrong version of a document? Or emailed the wrong version to a client? Then you already know the limitations of Microsoft Office when it comes to sharing and collaborating on files.
SharePoint is the most popular, powerful, secure and cost-effective web-based collaboration platform in the world. Because it is a horizontal platform, SharePoint can be adapted to all sorts of industries, unlike many other document management systems which are often designed for a specific industry.
Because of this built-in flexibility, SharePoint is more of a customizable solution than a one-size fits all band aid. And different businesses will look for different functionalities from SharePoint: from branding to mobility to business connectivity and much more. Choosing the right version of SharePoint is therefore an important decision, because the wrong choice could result in lost time, money and benefits.
In this first of 3 articles, we show you how you can fully benefit from SharePoint’s many collaborative and management capabilities. In subsequent articles, we offer tips for choosing the right version of SharePoint (foundation, enterprise, 2010, 2013), the right deployment and equally important, how to choose the right hosting provider.
SharePoint 2010 is a collaborative business tool that makes it easier for employees to work together by being able to share information and documents. Because this information is available anytime, from any location, SharePoint can boost productivity in a very concrete way.
Public folders in Exchange are somewhat similar in that they are specifically created to allow employees to share information with each other, too. And if you create a public folder in Outlook, you can also share contacts, messages, calendar items, etc.
So what makes them different? And which one is better suited to an organization’s specific needs?
That’s a question customers frequently ask us.
Today, SherWeb’s Level 3 Tech and Trainer Yves Landry breaks it down into simple terms, comparing an Exchange 2010 public folder (PF) infrastructure and a SharePoint (SP) Foundation 2010 environment.
Microsoft’s SharePoint Hosting 2010 enables Internet users to consolidate the number of web based tools and software applications that they utilize on a regular basis. Instead of bouncing from site to site for file sharing, calendars, blog and wiki creation, online meetings and file storage, along with a long list of other options, users who sign up for a SharePoint account will have easy one click access to everything in one location. SharePoint offers programs geared towards individuals or big corporations, ensuring that customers will get the right fit for both their needs and their budget without having to download any software. Read more »
With social networking becoming the buzzword that seems to cause investor money to leap out of their pockets and into promising enterprises, it’s no surprise that Microsoft has taken the time to do some development into social networking features in SharePoint 2010. With major players such as Google+ and Facebook in the market, SharePoint has some serious competition for the position of top social networking platform. Read more »
Microsoft SharePoint is an invaluable addition to any business environment, and is a central repository for web based applications. SharePoint is a powerful tool, but it can be daunting to first time users to understand the many things this software can accomplish. To that end, here are a few things you may not know about Microsoft SharePoint 2010. Read more »
Forget headshots, demos, auditions, or even writing your own novel… in this day and age, with powerful, easy-to-use networking tools such as YouTube, MySpace, blogs and other social mediums- being seen and heard has never been so accessible, so immediate and reached such a wide audience. Whether it’s actual talent or just appeal to the masses, here are some of the Internet’s most prominent individuals, who have gone from zero to hero (well, maybe not hero but certainly famed status) and their path to success. Read more »
Some said it wouldn’t last, that it would never be able to sustain the amount of users; that eventually, it would crash. But despite doubt and scepticism, the Internet has changed the world as we know it; the way we communicate, find and share information, do business and proven- it is very much here to stay. From being a network of networks to becoming a medium; an information superhighway without geographic frontiers, the Internet has made distances shorter and the world much smaller.
McLuhan’s “Global Village” Becomes Reality
Referred to as the “Oracle of the Electronic Age” in the early 1960’s, Marshall McLuhan predicted that humankind would one day be connected through “electronic interdependence”. Shifting from individualism to a collective identity, what McLuhan coined the “Global Village” couldn’t be more accurate today, thanks to the World Wide Web.
Though McLuhan was far ahead of his time, it would take decades before his theories came close to fathomable. In a Newsweek article published in 1995: The Internet? Bah! Hype alert: Why cyberspace isn’t, and will never be, nirvana, Clifford Stroll argues that “the Internet has become a wasteland of unfiltered data”, “without any pretense of completeness”, “lacking editors, reviewers or critics”. Bold statements that were a little too quick to judge, (meanwhile, his article had at least two typos in it), Stroll’s main concern was that computers would actually work to isolate us from one another, not bring us together.
Companies were also worried about investing time and resources into the Web due to its perceived unreliability. In many respects, their concerns were valid. Had more companies gone to the web, the Internet almost certainly wouldn’t have been able to handle the influx of new users.
But the Internet has come along way since then. In December of 1995, a total 16 million people around the world were using the Internet. As of December 2009, that number rose to 1.6 billion.
The Impact of Social Media on Today’s Business
In earlier days, websites functioned as simple on-line brochures for organizations, with very little interaction or real value for customers. But as technology improved, so did websites. Over the years, websites have become more interactive and it’s common to see discussion forums, e-commerce for on-line retailing and a wide range of other features, which ties back to the idea of a Global Village. Social media networking is the name of the game now, with websites having to hook into social media websites and create communities. Though we are beginning to see more and more attempts by both businesses and governments to control the Internet, the trend will most likely lead to increasing transparency if they wish to thrive in our fast-paced Age of Information. “The greatest changes will occur in the arena of trust and human relations.”
Internet Predictions Through Time
Here are just a few videos that offer a glimpse into how the Internet has been perceived over the last 40 years.
Internet predictions in 1969
Shopping online, online banking, webcams, (but perhaps not exchange hosting services)- take a look at how remarkably accurate predictions of the future were in this 1969 video.
Internet 1981 from print to online
One of the first attempts at a newspaper going from print to online:
Peter Mansbridge on the Growing Phenomenon Called “Internet”
For $200 a year you could be logged on to a computer network called: INTERNET
Interview with an Internet Café owner in 1995
“Ranking up their in popularity with VCR’s, people are now paying their bills, balancing their chequebook, and playing games online with people on the other side of the globe.” Wonder what they would have thought about today’s web based crm software?
SherWeb 
Microsoft’s 
