8-Feb-10 7:00 PM CST

SharePoint 2010 and Office 2010 - White Paper

To read the full white paper contents click here: Business Productivity at it's Best.

Abstract

This paper shows how two products, Microsoft® Office and Microsoft SharePoint®, contribute to the powerful architectural design of the Microsoft Business Productivity Infrastructure (BPI). The BPI stack approach suggests that only by thinking at a capability level (for example, “What do users want to do?"), and then adding the right aspects of capability in each place (client, server, and services), can we create desktop applications that also deliver rich server and services capabilities to information workers.

This paper describes how the 2010, 2007, and 2003 versions of Office work together with the 2010, 2007, and 2003 versions of SharePoint technologies. Although we provide an overview of Office and SharePoint features working together in past versions, this paper focuses on the integration features of the Microsoft Office 2010 experience with Microsoft SharePoint 2010.

The scenarios outlined in this paper show examples of how the power of SharePoint 2010 and related servers can be combined with capabilities of one or more Microsoft Office 2010 applications to deliver rich, intuitive, and easy-to-use capabilities directly into the hands of desktop users.

The scenarios cover the following value areas:

Collaboration Without Compromise
Bring Ideas to Life
Anywhere Access
The Practical IT Platform

The paper concludes that to realize the best user experience with Office and SharePoint integration features, organizations should upgrade client programs to Office Professional Plus 2010 and server technologies to SharePoint 2010.

Introduction

Microsoft Office has always been about automating tasks and providing people with choices for how they get things done at work, at school, and at home. When Microsoft Office products were first introduced, they helped people move beyond manual processes and tools to automated processes on computers. Over time, Microsoft Office has evolved and is now the primary vehicle by which people experience Business Productivity Infrastructure capabilities, such as collaboration and content management. Microsoft Office helps enhance business productivity by offering rich server capabilities that are tightly integrated into its user experience.

Many analysts support the notion of an integrated productivity environment for information workers. Gartner Group’s "Smart Enterprise", Forrester’s "Information Workplace", and Yankee Group’s "Extended Enterprise" frameworks all combine these capabilities to create the next-generation workplace for information workers. The introduction of Microsoft Office 2007 was the first time a solution of client, server, and service products, with tight design integration, could deliver the functionality that would have previously required 6–10 "best-in-class" products for a full BPI platform. The 2010 release of these products takes this integration to the next level by providing more flexibility in delivery and new capabilities to help save the business time and money.

The focus of this paper is to provide an overview of the specific capabilities enabled through Microsoft Office and SharePoint working together as key components of the BPI stack in the 2010 release.