Hosted SharePoint 2011 (Census Edition)

The closing date for voting in my SharePoint 2011 Awards is Friday 15th April so if you haven't voted yet then please visit SharePoint Village now, well after reading this week's blog.

After several reminders I have finally filled in my 'Household Questionnaire' for the 2011 Census. Just my luck that my partner's teenage daughter chose the night of 27th March for a sleepover. If I had known I would have to list all these visitors on the Census I would have made it another night for all these teenagers to sleep on my floor. It will though confuse my future relations if they are researching our family tree and see from the 2011 Census that I had three thirteen year old girls in the house that night. My parents spent hours checking the 1861 and 1871 Census to try and work out who lived with who and who was the father of which child. I suppose in future people will just watch re-runs of Jeremy Kyle to see who the real father was.

The last Census was of course back in 2001 and certainly in my life a lot has changed since then. This house wasn't even built back then, I hadn't got married or separated, my mother was still alive and healthy and the Villa weren't in a relegation fight. The world has also under gone many dramatic events since 2001; Twin Towers bombing, first black president, fall of Tony Blair's 'New Labour', England winning 'The Ashes' down under, the creation of 'X-Factor' and the death of Michael Jackson. Who knows what historical events will happen before the next Census in 2021. Will we see the end to the Census because it costs too much money? How many affairs will Ken Barlow have? Will we have a King of England?

Since 2001 SharePoint has also changed beyond recognition. It was first launched in 2001 about the same time as the last Census.

First SharePoint Server Box

The first major version (and first I worked with) was SharePoint Portal Server 2003 in the year when England majestically won the Rugby World Cup and Concorde made it's last commercial flight. The biggest SharePoint advances though came with the 2007 version and WSS 3. This linked SharePoint firmly into the Office family and was used as a Content Editor for Websites for the very first time. Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007 became Microsoft's fastest selling Server application of all time. This in a year when Rihanna asked us to stand under her umbrella and the last Harry Potter book was released (please don't tell me the ending as I am waiting to see last film in July).

Then last year in 2010 came the latest exciting SharePoint Edition, imaginatively called SharePoint 2010. Dipping it's feet into Social Networking, adding Business Connectivity Services and a fancy ribbon Microsoft have taken SharePoint to a new level. So in the year that we said a last goodbye to Big Brother, Alastair Darling as Chancellor (always reminds me of Blackadder)  and the hope of ever seeing England stage the FIFA World Cup, Microsoft gave us a SharePoint we can edit on-screen.

Microsoft are pushing us all now towards the 'Cloud' and believe that having our software hosted elsewhere and paying only for what we use is the great future. We at Office Talk are heavily committed to offering hosted SharePoint 2010 as a pay as you monthly service and are delighted at the success that our joint venture with NetConnect has had since it's launch early this year.

We have taken our popular Department site templates (first designed to be used with SharePoint 2007) and offered them on our hosted SharePoint 2010 packaged called 'Office Manager'. Named that because it lets you manage all your everyday Office tasks from Visitor Logging, to Accident Book via IT Helpdesk with more of hint of Purchase Ordering. If you haven't yet tried Office Manager or SharePoint 2010 then why not start a free month's trial now simply by clicking the link below. We won't ask for your credit card number, inside leg measurement or who slept at your house on 27th March 2011;

Free Trial - https://officetalk.teamportal.com/default.aspx

Hopefully 2011 won't be remembered as the year the great Aston Villa were relegated from the Premier League. A point last Saturday at Everton is hopefully a move in the right direction and on Sunday we can get three points against Newcastle to steer ourselves further clear of danger. You can follow the exciting relegation fight involving all the bottom ten teams at our SharePoint demonstration Site by following the link below;

URL ; www.office-talk.net

User Logon : demo@officetalk-navigator.com
Password : officetalk

Great to see the Villa fans all getting behind the club this week and especially good to see them recording the 'Bells and Ringing' video.

Come on you Villa boys !!!