“The future of SharePoint is now,” declared Jeff Teper, Microsoft Corporate VP of Office, OneDrive, and SharePoint, during his Keynote address at the May 6th Twin Cities SharePoint Saturday.
Noting that May 6 is just over one year after Microsoft’s Future of SharePoint announcements on May 4, 2016, he welcomed attendees to the “second year of SharePoint’s resurgence.”
Teper’s address focused on the past, present, and future of SharePoint as he enthused about the growth of SharePoint and Office 365. Office 365 has “100 million plus active business users,” he said, emphasizing “active”. He pointed out that Office 365 is being used quite heavily in businesses of all sizes and continues on a rapid path of expansion.
He noted that Microsoft’s Mission Statement now includes a call to “empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more.” As far as implementing that mission in SharePoint, he said his team’s focus is on building a comprehensive collaboration solution while fostering a community of SharePoint users and developers.
Teper listed some highlights of new features coming to SharePoint and Office 365:
Expanding the use of Groups – every Group gets Outlook, SharePoint, and OneDrive access to provide a place of collaboration and for getting work done. These groups can come and go as needed, whether on a project or longer-term basis. The emphasis is getting out of siloed applications and focusing on what the Group needs to accomplish its tasks.
Rapid Development with low code/no code tools – Microsoft Flow and PowerApps provide a way for a non-programmer to add functionality to SharePoint and Office 365.
Move to SharePoint Development Framework – The SharePoint Development Framework, aka SPfx, uses an open source model that is accessible to a wider range of developers. It delivers 100% client-side rendered code, which loads faster from a local cache or CDN (content delivery network).
Replacement of REST API with Office Graph – Teper pointed out that the REST API/Javascript focus is being replaced by the Graph API, which emphasizes serving up relevant and contextual content in Office 365.
Emphasis on Security and Compliance – “You don’t trade off security by going to the cloud, you get security by going to the cloud,” Teper said. He pointed out some of Microsoft’s many ways of securing user files and content, and directed people to a whitepaper with details about Office 365 security.
Support of Hybrid SharePoint environments – Realizing many organizations are not ready to go fully to the Cloud, Microsoft’s support for hybrid architecture is strong, with access and data seamlessly available from SharePoint on-premises or Office 365. For more on Hybrid, see:
- BYU Research Project Highlights Hybrid SharePoint blog article
- Hybrid: A Bridge to the Cloud whitepaper
Teper mentioned the many SharePoint Saturday and other SharePoint events and conferences going on worldwide. This level of enthusiasm in the SharePoint/Office 365 user community inspires his team to create new and better solutions. He did say that Seattle had one of its rainiest winters this past year, which is “great coding weather”, and that also contributed to the many new features and enhancements coming out of Microsoft.
The Microsoft VP’s Keynote address kicked off a busy SharePoint Saturday, with nearly 400 attendees and 40 classes. Crow Canyon Software was glad to be a Premium Booth Sponsor for this event.
Keynote slides are available here.
