Introduction
SharePoint is an application that you can reach by using a browser and it has been developed by Microsoft. It was launched in 2001 and was the result of two projects. Office Server was based on FrontPage and was developed to help with bottom-up collaboration, while Tahoe was based on Exchange and allowed organisations to set up portals. Microsoft has introduced SharePoint a Cloud service as part of the Business Productivity Online Suite which was later renamed to Office 365. SharePoint is getting regular updates and is still available as an on-premises solution.
Impact on organizations
Microsoft still has the most popular software solution for creating documents with the Office suite and they have built on top of that by developing SharePoint and streamlining collaboration. SharePoint is mostly used for Document Management, but it also offers a solution for Intranets. It’s flexibility allows organisations to realize many different type of portals and the portals now support the same type of development as with regular websites. The Intranet features have recently been updated and we have a lot of experience with integrating SharePoint and Yammer to realize a Social Intranet.
The future
The acquisition of Yammer has had a major impact on how Microsoft innovates their services. Yammer was developed by a small team and has always been a Cloud only solution, while most SharePoint environments were based on an on-premises installation. Microsoft was used to updating SharePoint every 3 years and has now embraced regular updates as with Yammer. The introduction of Teams shows that Microsoft recognizes the need to sometimes start over and realize a new experience and SharePoint is turning into an assest for existing and new services rathers than only a standalone solution.
