SharePoint MVP 2010 Predictions

This time last year, we published “MVP Predictions for 2009” which, for the most part, came true: Most of the predictions centered around the fact that, despite the poor economy, SharePoint adoption would continue its astronomical rise, which it did.

The sold-out SharePoint Conference, with 7000+ attendees and many dozens of vendors touting new solutions, is a testament to that. Gary Lapointe’s prediction that SharePoint 2010 would shine a spotlight on the need to know PowerShell was also spot-on.

This year, I queried the MVP community for its predictions. Here’s a sampling of what many IT pros and developers who spend a lot of time supporting SharePoint and the community predict about 2010.

Tobias Zimmergren foresees that, with the introduction of all the new capabilities of SharePoint 2010, customers and companies will quickly realize that building standard and custom solutions on top of SharePoint 2010 is a whole lot easier than it used to be. He voices the praise raised by many developers: that Microsoft has really covered a lot of the pain points from previous versions and done a great job in providing a solid platform from which to work.

Tobias, an MVP out of Sweden, just wrote a fantastic (English language) introduction to the Client Object Model for SharePoint 2010 , and plans to publish a lot of “Getting Started” guides in the next few months covering a variaety of developer-oriented aspects of SharePoint 2010.

Sean Wallbridge, a SharePoint MVP in Victoria, BC Canada, says: "Demand for SharePoint is still on the lower crest of the tidal wave in my opinion. I expect we'll see even greater demand and momentum in 2010, particularly with the arrival and enthusiasm behind SharePoint 2010. 2007 has been around for some time ... yet the convergence of related technologies getting faster and better (bandwidth, maturity of browsers/technologies and more acceptance by end users of web based business), has only recently meant that SharePoint is really becoming a household name and need. This is particularly noticeable in the SMB market that I primarily play in – SharePoint isn’t just for the Enterprise. SharePoint is a product that can change how a company does business - whether deployed across the Enterprise, or simply providing a 'quick win' for a departmental application.

In addition, acceptance and increased interest in the "cloud" and the ability to fire up a SharePoint site "today", should result in even more businesses looking to SharePoint to exorcise technology demons such as the waste of energy that exists in email today. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised to see the uptake of SharePoint in the next 12 months to reach figures close to double the total implementations of SharePoint to date. Businesses, attitudes and networks are ready for SharePoint … now." See Sean's blog for more about SharePoint.

Asif Rehmani predicts that SharePoint Designer 2010 will be a Game Changer. He says, “With the upcoming release of SharePoint 2010, SharePoint Designer 2010 (SPD) will rise to its true potential as The Tool to customize and build solutions on top of SharePoint.

"SPD will become the application of choice for business analysts, site administrators, power users, IT professionals and even developers to create robust applications using SharePoint's powerful underlying components. This trend will continue to take effect in the SharePoint community as more and more people realize that there is only so much you can do using the browser and aside from resorting to writing code using Visual Studio, SharePoint Designer is the best option to truly realize their investment in SharePoint.”

Woody Windischman predicts that the target on SharePoint's back will only continue to grow as it gains ever more capability and mindshare. Virtually every new product that has anything to do with document or content management, Enterprise 2.0, or "collaboration", will either be designed to work with SharePoint, or be hailed as a "SharePoint Killer."

"Any perceived minor weakness in SharePoint will be elevated to the status of "fatal flaw" in their campaigns. Of course, none of these "killers" will be anything of the sort, and many (most?) won't even be truly competing in the same space. But people will still need to wade through the marketing materials "just in case."

To read more MVP predictions, including Dan's predictions, please go to SharePointPro Connections magazine