SharePoint in the Seattle Area

Yesterday’s SharePoint 2010 Solutions roadshow at the Microsoft office in Bellevue, WA was a full house (see here, with me at the podium). About 80 attendees represented a wide variety of industries – from wireless providers like TMobile, to health services organizations such as Peace Health, educational institutions like Seattle University, federal government entities including the FAA, and large manufacturers Boeing and Paccar.

About 75% of the audience was using SharePoint 2007 in their organizations, 15% has already migrated to SharePoint 2010, and the remainder (about 10%) were a mix of those using 2003, not yet on SharePoint, or in the process of migrating from one version to another.

Michael Panciroli, a SharePoint Technology Specialist from Microsoft, kicked off the day and took the audience through the highlights of the SharePoint 2010 feature set, including:

• Document sets
• Accessing SharePoint through a virtual machine
• Using SharePoint to host your website
• FAST
• Enterprise search
• Using Visio services to design custom workflows
• More (all this goes to show that SharePoint is much more than a document repository)

The rest of the day included presentations by organizations whose software and services extend the SharePoint platform: K2, BA-Insight, Neudesic, and of course, Adlib.

Overall, it’s clear: organizations are moving to SharePoint for an increasing number of reasons: extranets, ECM, intranets, and more.

Stay tuned for more SharePoint 2010 Solutions whistle stops across North America!