In the first post of this three part series, I shared my colleague Matt Morse’s recent presentation on SharePoint 2013 and discussed Microsoft’s investment in the new release. Following this, my second post summarized Perficient’s experience with SharePoint 2013. In this post, I’ll recap Matt’s third and final question, “What’s new in SharePoint 2013?”
Many who are on the current version of SharePoint, or perhaps an older version, are consistently hearing the SharePoint 2013 buzz, in both the marketplace and from Microsoft. This leads to a question we hear a lot lately: What is the value for our organization? When is the right time to upgrade? How can the new capabilities of the platform help us become a better business and be more effective in what we do?
Social
You’ve probably given thought to social collaboration solutions. Those with a current investment in SharePoint that didn’t find the social features of SharePoint 2007 or SharePoint 2010 very compelling are likely to be very interested in SharePoint 2013’s offering. In terms of the new features, the platform is very consumer grade – with an activity stream that resembles Facebook, as well as the ability to “tag” and “like” posts, documents, and updates, similar to what you see in today’s consumer space.
Mobile
Many of our clients want to leverage the fact that all their employees and customers are walking around with a computer in their pocket. How do we make information available to people at the touch of their fingertips? With SharePoint 2013, mobile capabilities and exposure of mobile content is a reality. Device targeting feeds content down a specific channel and presents it in different ways, depending how the content is being consumed.
Enterprise Search 
Circling back to the heart, and the idea of the users loving the experience – Microsoft put their FAST search capability underneath it all. What does this equate to? An enterprise grade search engine topped with a consumer grade search experience. SharePoint 2013 will likely be a platform that many companies look at as their enterprise search solution, especially if they have an existing investment and a significant SharePoint presence in their environment.
For more on SharePoint 2013 and social, listen to Rich Wood’s webinar, Understanding SharePoint 2013 and the Social Landscape. You can also register for our next webinar, Create Great Search Experiences with SharePoint 2013, where Matt joins Brian Flanagan from our XD team to cover key components of designing optimal search experiences using the SharePoint 2013 platform.
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