Happy New Year 2010

Hard to believe that another year has come and gone. I’ve never been one for predictions and resolutions, which I’m no good at keeping anyway, but I think 2010 is going to be a big year in SharePoint land. For starters, SharePoint 2010 really will be a game-changer. I believe with this release that we will see SharePoint reach its potential in many organizations and adoption rates will be phenomenal. Developers finally have the tools they need to create killer applications and administrators have a much richer set of controls to manage their environments. Many of the almost-good-enough-but-not-quite features in 2007 (BDC, Records Management, Content Deployment, Excel Services, Search, and Shared Services, just to name a few) have been greatly improved and will generate a great deal of interest in using Enterprise features. Best of all, the reliance upon clunky web parts for content management and the slick new UI will make the end user experience a great deal better.

As AC mentioned, there are a few areas that will demand more focus from developers in 2010. Silverlight will be huge and I anticipate that we’ll see some very engaging and visually appealing solutions on that front. Creating service applications will also be a big area of interest. Lots of people will be getting on the VSIX bandwagon and extending Visual Studio 2010, especially in relation to one of my favorite new areas, code deployment. I also expect to see some cool extensions to the new SharePoint Project Items and Project Extensions. We’ll all become more proficient with WCF and, despite their drawbacks and limitations, sandboxed solutions should be a big part of all our lives. I’m not sure if people will jump with both feet into Windows 7 development with the Client OM seeing as how there are so many new areas of server-level development but it’s certainly an area to watch. I anticipate that the trend of vendors rushing into the space will continue and I’m looking forward to seeing some cool new solutions to fill gaps where the base product leaves off.

As usual, I’ll be bouncing around the globe doing various events and conferences. There will be a lot of community action taking place, with expanded user group meetings in the UK and lots more SharePoint Saturdays and TechCons, not to mention the big get togethers like TechEd and SharePoint Conference. I’ll be working hard with my ISPA compatriots to expand our value to the community and increase the number of user groups around the world (look for some big announcements on that front early on in the new year).

So here’s to an exciting 2010. May it prove fruitful and fun. Happy SharePointing!