SharePoint 2013 Analysis & Reviews

Microsoft started the roll-out of the updated version of Office 365 for business users earlier this week. The upgrades are present in all elements of the suite and reflect a changing work environment that is now more mobile, social and collaborative than it was when the suite was originally launched 18 months ago.

It's inevitable when you get a big release like Microsoft’s upgrade of Office 365 yesterday that a bunch of vendors will following up with tools to complement the release. Some of the services are more significant and useful than others, as is the case with MetaVis, which has just announced that its migration and administration tools will work with the new upgrade.

Wednesday, EPiServer releases a new connector that allows organizations to collaborate on website content within SharePoint.

The nature of how we collaborate has evolved.

In another SharePoint related announcement this week, Socialtext announced three new points of integration between SharePoint and Socialtext, as more companies start preparing their product portfolios for the release of SharePoint 2013, expected for this quarter.

SharePoint governance and infrastructure management technology provider AvePoint is releasing DocAve 6 Service Pack (SP) 2. This latest version of AvePoint’s enterprise-class management platform for SharePoint governance includes expanded SharePoint 2013 and Office 365 support.

Ever roll out a SharePoint implementation to be hit with a bombardment of requests for features and configurations? It's important to nip this in the bud with a communication and internal public relations strategy to steer the conversation and SharePoint roadmap in the right direction.

IT may be happy with SharePoint, but it looks like the business users aren't so much. This according to new Forrester research.

When you look at SharePoint 2013 Social Features, it is important to understand the Social features are really just a way to highlight how users are already working. Once you've flipped things around and are starting with the user and common actions, it becomes easy to see how the tools available to you can simply enhance current activities of users.

Even if there is still no official release date, every day it seems we learn more surrounding the SharePoint 2013 release. The latest -- a recent blog from one of the people working on it that provides brief glimpse into some of the mobile features.

SharePoint social business partner NewsGator, updated its Social Sites platform to include compatibility with the soon to be released SharePoint 2013.

This week in the document management world, the build up to the release of SharePoint 2013 continues, but governance is still an issue. Meanwhile, Laserfiche has added cursive scanning through Parascript, OpenText appoints a new CMO, Hannon Hill upgrades to v7.2, while Nuance also upgrades its scanning capabilities.

In the not too distant future, I predict SharePoint will disappear altogether. It might take a year, maybe a little longer. But at some point soon it will be gone.

I expect to see Microsoft announce the official release of SharePoint 2013 any day now. It’s an interesting time for organizations on the business collaboration platform, and many of you may be considering the move to SharePoint 2013 sooner rather than later to take advantage of some new capabilities. But what’s the best approach to upgrade to the new platform? Let’s check out the options.

The buildup to the release of SharePoint 2013 continues. One of the issues that was widely discussed around the 2010 release was governance and SharePoint environments. This time, with so much more data under the bridge -- and more and more people using SharePoint -- governance will be certainly be a hot topic once again.