So after the last SharePoint conference back in 2012, this week sees another edition of SharePoint conference (#SPC14 @SPConf) in Las Vegas. Channel 9 MSDN was the channel for me to consume the live keynote delivered by former US president Bill Clinton (@BillClinton) and Microsoft Chief Jeff Teper (@JeffTeper). Interestingly, back in 2008 the keynote was delivered by Bill Gates and yesterday we had another Bill delivering the keynote!

For me the biggest headline was that there will be new On-Premise SharePoint version in 2015 – Great result!

The post summarises some of the key points that I took away & discussed in the keynote and what the future of SharePoint looks like!

A quick glance at Twitter stats before the keynote started showed that there were 19 million #SPC14 impressions and after the keynote this figure rose to 26 million – the excitement just kept energising! You can follow the current twitter stats at http://techchir.ag/1dgrvwG (thanks @meetdux)

Office 365 is now the fastest growing commercial product in Microsoft’s history, thus beating SharePoint, however, in my view SharePoint is still rich and very much baked in throughout Office 365 functionality.

Below were some of the points Bill Clinton discussed:

• You cannot refuse anything just because you can’t do everything – more often we forget to ask what are we trying to achieve
• Bill is grateful to Microsoft for being part of Clinton Initiative for 8 years where the technology has enabled variety of programmes around the world
• Whilst today’s technologies brings us closer, there is increased growth of  inter-dependencies to get things done
• There will always be a gap with what Governments can provide and what private sector can produce – technologists are critical part of this to create strong bridges
• Technology is always needed for Public Sector Investment and Private Sector Innovation

The second half of the keynote was delivered by Jeff Teper and below were some of the main developments that paves the way ahead:

• Office 365 phase 1 has been very much part of building the cloud infrastructure and services (SharePoint, Exchange and Lync). Here on, phase 2 is all about focussing on transformation and productivity networks
• Future of SharePoint: 1. Social Workplace 2. Personalised Insights 3. NextGen Portal
• Oslo app and Office Graph innovations were demonstrated by Julia White where information is beautifully overloaded – thus give me actions to deal with!
• iPad was used to demonstrate some cool demos, and thus losing the opportunity to sell Surface tablet!
• PowerBI with powerful visualisations were demonstrated, and thus being every Information Poor’s friend!
• New Video portal in Office 365 announced
• Contextual Apps development across Office 365 suite with strong focus on OAuth, OData, REST, HTML5
• Whilst there was no mention of “No code” nor InfoPath’s death – Access Apps is powering ahead and receiving more attention
• Availability of Multi-factor authentication in Office 365 and hybrid solutions with federated identities as well
• OneDrive for Business (formerly SkyDrive Pro) available as standalone product

So plenty of announcements and updates were given and there are probably more that I may have missed, nevertheless, there is a lot to unpack in the coming months and years, but the focus still remains protected for providing solutions to solve business problems with accelerated technology landscape.

More details on the yesterday’s keynote can be found at Office365 blog – Technology enabling new ways of working http://techchir.ag/1ks2zqO

Below is the glimpse of some twitter attractions during the keynote yesterday!

Enjoy!

Published by Chirag Patel @techChirag

Chirag is a highly experienced Chartered IT Professional consultant and Microsoft Certified Trainer (MCT) at Patel Consulting delivering business collaboration & productivity, data & information management solution implementation, migration and divestment projects with Microsoft Teams, SharePoint, Microsoft Viva, Power Platform, Security & Compliance and Microsoft 365 related technologies. Having worked with SharePoint since 2001 and Office 365 since 2012, Chirag has covered many roles, such as Delivery Lead, Technology Specialist, Solution Architect and Trainer working with clients in Energy, Financials, IT & Communications, Professional Services, Retail, Education, Public & Third sector, which has lead him to be an exceptional consultant & trainer as quoted by clients "established himself as a leader on the project, not only delivering on the separation and migration of M365 services, but also guiding and challenging colleagues to ensure the broader set of Cloud transition activities". Chirag is highly qualified with an MSc in Business Systems Analysis & Design and holds many certifications including Microsoft 365 Enterprise Administrator Expert and TOGAF Certified Architect. As a volunteer, Chirag enjoys running Microsoft 365 UK (M365UK) user group and is a frequent speaker at local & international events. For his technical community contributions, Chirag has been awarded as a Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) every year since 2020. He is also an Approved Chartered Membership Assessor for BCS (British Computer Society). According to sessionize.com, he was among the top 3% of most active speakers in 2022! View all posts by Chirag Patel @techChirag