SharePoint has successfully completed 17 years as one of the world’s most popular intranet platforms and one of the most widely adopted Microsoft technology solutions among enterprises. With SharePoint, organizations can build intranets with great business and team collaboration features. Even after all these years, Microsoft is still betting on SharePoint to stand its ground…and it is.

SharePoint has been augmented by the tech giant with various enhancements for the past couple of years, garnering praise from the community while accelerating the demand for SharePoint development services. Surprisingly, however, not all opinions on SharePoint are positive. It could be the polarized opinions that are making many business decision-makers doubt the platform’s corporate intranet capabilities.

To dispel such doubts, we will explore the major pros and cons of SharePoint intranet in this blog.

Fact: SharePoint has a rich set of features and out-of-the-box capabilities

Pro: SharePoint’s sheer number of features is itself a big merit of the platform. The features can ensure workflow management, enterprise-wide collaboration, content and document management etc. The users essentially get to complete their tasks faster and with much less effort. AI-fueled content collaboration and personalized experiences tailored with the help of AI makes SharePoint a fantastic tool for enterprises.

Con: The number of features can be considered a con of SharePoint as well due to the fact that it can make things quiet messy. For starters, it will be harder for a business to determine what all features of SharePoint will suit their needs. Not prioritizing them and enabling them all will result in an intranet that would do more harm than good; hindering user activities being the best case scenario.

Fact: SharePoint offers deep customizability

Pro: Not all businesses rely on SharePoint’s out-of-the-box features simply because of the fact that said features may not fit a specific business context or meet a specific business objective. However, SharePoint intranet can be appropriately customized – embedding corporate branding, developing custom add-ons, building solutions to perform specific activities etc. As a matter of fact, it’s quite simple to create a unique SharePoint solution that covers a range of processes. All it takes is a set of smart templates and a few clicks.

Con: The customizability of SharePoint is certainly a great merit. But such customizations tend to demand a lot of time and investments. Intranet customization is not something a business can achieve in a fortnight. In addition, the deeper the SharePoint intranet is customized, the bigger the bill.

…which brings us to our final assessment for now.

Fact: SharePoint comes with at least 3 deployment approaches each with different pricing models.

Pro: Commonly chosen SharePoint deployment approaches are on-premises, cloud, and hybrid. Back in the day, SharePoint existed on-premises only. So organizations were required to invest in infrastructure and licenses. Soon after, service charges were added to the bill.

But the advent of the cloud allowed Microsoft to diversify their offerings with a number of cloud plans with varying price tags. SharePoint owners could choose their own pricing model aligned with their budget capabilities.

Con: Just because they get to choose their pricing model doesn’t mean the bill would be any lesser. Cloud intranets do cut intranet costs substantially. But SharePoint deployment itself requires investments. On-premises model requires investments in infrastructure, licenses, and customization. Cloud intranets are more reasonable but come with monthly subscription payments. A hybrid model is a mix of both meaning the organization has to invest in both on-premises and cloud SharePoint.
 

So is it a good idea to use SharePoint?

 
The answer to this question, to a great extent, depends on the size of your business, the collaboration your business needs, and obviously your business’ budget for intranet setup. SharePoint intranet is absolutely beneficial for medium to large-sized businesses with multiple teams and offices. Setting up SharePoint would be easier for businesses with a well-rounded IT infrastructure that complements the business’ growth potential.

There are SharePoint experts who can help your business deploy and leverage SharePoint effectively. Though not as big an industry as ASP.NET development services, SharePoint development still has great demand across enterprises who believe in the collaboration-productivity relationship.

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Not all enterprises have chosen the cloud. Many still make do with on-premises systems. Nevertheless, it’s a fact that Microsoft is a major player when it comes to cloud-based services and on-premises enterprise platforms. In this blog, we will be taking a look at one of the most widely used microsoft technology solutions in the World – SharePoint.

In 2019, we will likely witness a whole new generation of Office servers such as SharePoint, Exchange, and Skype for Business etc. hit the market with innovative features that reflect the cloud-dominated future that’s in the making – enough to upgrade modern data centers hopefully.

But let’s focus on SharePoint 2019 and its best features for now.

The most recent evolutions of SharePoint made it an on-premises platform offering a number of benefits for enterprises in the form of Modern SharePoint Experiences.
 

Modern SharePoint Team Sites

 
Modern SharePoint Team Sites are responsive and comes with an out-of-the-box engine to publish news. Users will be able to share news with the team further enhancing the already improved collaboration that SharePoint facilitates. Unlike most modern Team Sites that are connected to an Office 365 group, Modern on-premises Team Sites don’t require integration with Exchange to function properly.
 

Modern SharePoint Communication Sites

 
As the name suggests, Communication Sites primarily serve the purpose of facilitating information sharing across teams. It’s one of the major pillars of collaboration that SharePoint is known for. Communication Sites in SharePoint 2019 now feature three new templates – Blank, Topic, and Showcase. Included users will be able to share news, policies, and information with each other on an elegant interface.
 

Modern Search Experience

 
The Modern Search Experience feature completes SharePoint’s transition to on-premises. Modern Search Experience in SharePoint 2019 enables users to easily find documents, list items and people inside the SharePoint environment.
 

SharePoint Home

 
Possibly one of the best features in SharePoint on-premises, the SharePoint Home shows news from both Team Sites and Communication Sites in a single location. Additionally, the sites that you follow and the activities from each site are brought together thanks to the feature. Easier access to your favorite sites is the icing on the cake.
 

OneDrive Synchronization

 
SharePoint Server 2019 enables on-premises SharePoint to benefit from the most recent improvements in Windows 10 and OneDrive. As a matter of fact, SharePoint 2019 features the latest version of OneDrive which also goes by the name Next Generation Sync Client (NGSC).

Considering the fact that the introduction of OneDrive positively influenced the demand for SharePoint development services, it’s safe to assume that the latest OneDrive version will increase SharePoint adoption rate even further in the coming years.
 

Power BI Report Server Integration

 
SharePoint 2019 also removed or deprecated a few Business Intelligence features but integrated Power BI Report Server in return. With the Power BI Report Server, users will be able to create sensational reports that can be easily displayed in SharePoint Server 2019.
 

 Conclusion

 
SharePoint is already a favorite for companies offering agile software development services. Now that a number of great features that made the community embrace SharePoint Online also made their way to on-premises in SharePoint Server 2019, business users will most certainly find all the aforementioned features exciting enough to migrate to SharePoint 2019 to leverage the popular platform in their on-premises environments.

Microsoft recently announced that they are working on the next version of their signature IDE, Visual Studio which could bring major changes to software development. Reportedly, the tech giant is still in the early planning phase for the next Visual Studio tool suite release, named Visual Studio 2019. The earliest signs of Visual Studio was spotted at GitHub, which is turn about to be acquired by Microsoft for $7.5 billion in company stock.

John Montgomery, director of program management for Visual Studio at Microsoft, after revealing that Visual Studio 2019 is in the works in his blog post, also added that we will be seeing many indicators of the company laying the foundation for the latest Visual Studio suite in Github, where their Developer Tools team spent a lot of time in.
 

Sneak peek

 
Visual Studio 2017 was launched in March 2017, which gave rise to a speculation that Visual Studio 2019 would be released in early 2019. However, the company did not reveal anything on the release, but promised to say more in the coming months.

John Montgomery’s blog post still provided a couple of goals for Microsoft’s new Visual Studio release. The company intends to release Visual Studio 2019 faster, with a goal of making the IDE suite more reliable and effective for teams. Visual Studio 2019 is also expected to be easier to use with a short learning curve.

The director also added that we can expect better refactorings and navigation, in addition to a more capable debugger and faster solutions loads and builds. The company would also be exploring the collaboration aspect of the next version, leveraging connected capabilities like Live Share to facilitate real-time collaboration. Cloud scenarios are also expected to be more seamless.

Another intriguing reveal was Microsoft’s willingness to improve team productivity by having Visual Studio utilize Azure to deliver AI-driven assistance to the IDE. Seemingly, other Microsoft technology solutions will also be getting updates to leverage AI, considering the fact that the company seems to be willing to invest in hot trends.
 

Where they are headed

 
Because they specifically mentioned Visual Studio’s Live Share feature, we can expect the company to improve the feature. Live Share was announced in November last year, and quickly became popular for its co-authoring capabilities i.e. enabling developers to work together on the same code, much similar to the edit capabilities of a few Office 365 applications. Essentially, the company wants their new Visual Studio to facilitate real-time collaboration effectively.

Aside from its goals for the IDE suite, Microsoft expansion plans also seems promising since their announcement of the GitHub acquisition earlier this month. It was announced by Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, who also added that GitHub will remain an open platform and developers would still be able to extend it. Developers would be able to use the languages, operating systems, and tools of their choice for their projects, and deploy the code on any cloud and any device.

We will be seeing Microsoft’s IntelliCode, an AI-powered assistance for cloud scenarios in Visual Studio 2019. When introduced during Microsoft’s Build 2018 Developers Conference in May, IntelliCode was applauded. The AI-driven program learns over time and streamlines formatting while suggesting APIs and recommendations to avoid errors. The company is leaning on Azure to train IntelliCode and get it functioning in Visual Studio 2019.

The company also revealed that it took about a whopping 2000 high quality GitHub repositories to train IntelliCode’s machine learning model and ensure that it sticks to best practices.
 

Conclusion

 
Although the company didn’t give out any info on the release of the new Visual Studio version, they certainly made it clear that the path they are taking would benefit every Application Management services company leveraging their technologies. Montgomery also teased an announcement in the next few months. Developers who participated in the Visual Studio 2017 Preview would likely be the first to get information on the release of the first beta version of Visual Studio 2019.

Enterprise applications is no longer just an option, as businesses across the globe push forward to complete digital transformation by leveraging evolving technologies. Size or geographic locations of businesses don’t matter anymore. Enterprise apps are personalized software solutions that are designed to integrate into a business, and aid the organization in management and monitoring activities. Typically, these apps meet a wide range of needs, handling multiple mission-critical processes and present its operations on an appealing dashboard.

Modern day enterprise software development may take several months or even years to complete if the latest technologies and trends are leveraged. The applications have many complex aspects behind its robustness, stability, security, and integration capabilities. To make such an app that delivers great ROI to a business and aids them in reaching their goals faster, we would need powerful frameworks to lay foundation.

Of those many frameworks available today, ASP.NET still stands out from the rest for its potential that enables developers to create complex enterprise applications. This also serves as a major factor that contributes to the growing demand for ASP.NET development services.
 

Enterprise apps with ASP.NET

 
Ever since its arrival, ASP.NET never failed to deliver promising results to organizations. One of the most popular Microsoft technology solutions underwent a couple of transformation over the years, which made it an even better choice for enterprise app development in this age.

For an enterprise app to succeed, it requires:

• The ability to function in an ecosystem where there are many users, many devices, and many locations.
• Ability to function while meeting all business requirements, policies, and guidelines of stakeholders.
• Adaptability, flexibility, and scalability

Developers, for years, used the ASP.NET framework to develop enterprise apps and imbue them with the aforementioned qualities. With efficient testing to ensure the app’s quality, most ASP.NET powered apps would succeed in providing increased productivity and profitability to organizations.

The Microsoft technology’s many features including cross platform support, enhanced security, multi-language support, reliability, scalability, code reusability etc. also contribute to a higher ROI from ASP.NET enterprise apps. The support from Microsoft over the years made ASP.NET remain a favorite to an already huge community.
 

Conclusion

 
In essence, ASP.NET comes with the whole package of services and features, not to mention compatibility with almost every platform and language, making it one of the best options out there for developing high performance enterprise web applications. It’s performance-intensive and scalable, which is exactly what businesses need to survive in today’s dynamic market conditions.

Certainly there are alternatives. But the fact that ASP.NET retained the trust it had gained for many years, is a testament to it being the best platform to develop enterprise apps.

Millions of developers joined the Microsoft .NET community over the years catapulting the technology to one of the most popular Microsoft technology solutions in the world. With the .NET platform, developers are able to craft rich, interactive applications that can run on Windows platforms, the internet, or even mobile devices.

However, they would still need a lot of help from various other sources and tools. In this blog, we list a few websites that can come in real handy for .NET developers and make their job easier.
 

CodeProject

 
CodeProject is reliable for thousands of .NET developers because it features helpful tutorial articles and downloadable code that can make things less challenging for developers – both experts and amateurs. The articles in CodeProject are all written by veteran developers to help other developers with a to-the-point solution to their coding problems.

The fact that the developers that post such articles aren’t paid and genuinely want to contribute to the community makes CodeProject a friend-in-need for .NET developers.
 

DevSource

 
One of the most important things a .NET developer should possess is the mindset to stay updated on everything that revolves around the Microsoft platform. DevSource can help with that.

DevSource is a digital magazine sponsored by Microsoft that can keep the devs up to date on all things Microsoft technologies related. Devs can subscribe to the magazine’s free weekly newsletters to pick up new things on the go.
 

DotNetNuke

 
DotNetNuke is not just a website, but an open source framework that .NET devs can download and use to build web applications with Microsoft’s ASP.NET. Because it has a strong open source community working on making it better with each iterations, the framework now demonstrates efficient coding practices that would prove useful to even experienced developers.

However, the professional edition of DotNetNuke comes with a price tag. The community edition on the other hand is free to use and is totally worth registering to.
 

ScottGu’s Blog

 
Who better to look up to for some Microsoft knowledge than the Corporate Vice President for Microsoft’s Developer Division…

Scott Guthrie’s regularly updated blog is where devs can find announcements before they show up anywhere else. The blogs cover a wide range of Microsoft technologies from .NET base class libraries to SilverLight.
 

MSDN Magazine

 
When it comes to understanding current .NET standards that devs should be following, there’s no source better than the MSDN Magazine. This website can be very resourceful for developers who want to understand Microsoft technologies in depth. The articles available are comparatively longer than the articles in various other sources.

What makes MSDN Magazine unique is the fact that they are very strict when it comes to accepting content for their magazine. They scour through many articles from contributors and post those that they deem worthy. The articles in the journal certainly won’t disappoint.
 

Conclusion

 
Resources of all digital sizes and shapes are available for .NET developers provided they are willing to look at the right places. At some point in their career, one of the sites listed above can prove invaluable. The many articles and standards recommended by the community through blogs in various websites can help .NET developers refine their skillsets and passion in the technology.