Recent SharePoint ISV News

There are a couple of items that have recently been released that are important to the SharePoint ISV community and to those that may become part of that community.  An article referencing the 10 Best Intranets of 2009 show the growing trend around SharePoint adoption.  Of the 10 best, five of those are SharePoint based sites.   A quote from the article,

“Most impressively, fully half of the winning intranets used SharePoint, especially the recent MOSS platform (Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007). As the following chart shows, SharePoint use has grown dramatically in recent years. This is particularly impressive given that, from 2003–2006, the winning intranets didn't use earlier versions of SharePoint at all.”

We hope that tend continues and that it will continue to provide opportunities for the ISV community to increase revenue.

Another announcement is the latest CTP release of the Visual Studio Extensions for Windows SharePoint Services.  This 1.3 version release will address several areas.  A full list can be found at the SharePoint Team Blog.  Some of the things that are particularly exciting include x64 support, command line build enabling continuous integration and build servers as well as a new project item template for SharePoint RootFile deployment.  Final release is slated for Spring of 2009.

Cliff Green
Sr. Application Development Consultant, MCSD.NET, MCTS