Our topic this month: Same But Different: Why Developing for the Cloud is like Developing for SharePoint but SO Much Different, presented by John Ferringer, a Senior Manager Consultant for Sogeti, LLC.

Silverlight. Sandbox Solutions. JavaScript. The Client Object Model. These are components or features that can all be leveraged by developers in an on premises SharePoint environment, as well as Microsoft’s cloud offering for SharePoint: SharePoint Online. But while these similarities provide a strong bridge between the two SharePoint worlds, there are still a lot of reasons why they’re vastly different. In on premises SharePoint environments, developers have many other appealing options to choose from that can make customization much easier and smoother than these client-side developer tools.

The difference in the cloud with SharePoint Online is that developers can’t choose other easier options over Sandbox Solutions, JavaScript, or the Client Object Model. In SharePoint Online’s world it’s Microsoft’s way or the highway, and that means that software designers and developers have to approach solution design and creation in a much different manner than for on premises custom solutions.In this session John will present a comprehensive review of the tools and features available for development with SharePoint Online and then takes a closer look at their capabilities and limitations. It also explains the shift in decision making and solution design that needs to occur to turn SharePoint Online’s restrictions into opportunities, as well as looks at other available resources for development with SharePoint Online, such as Microsoft’s Azure offering or Amazon’s Cloud Services.  

About our speaker:

John Ferringer is a SharePoint IT Professional with over seven years of experience administering and supporting SharePoint technologies and has spent over thirteen years working in the information technology consulting industry. He has worked with Microsoft Online Services (MSO) and the Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS) since its initial Beta release, and is a Microsoft Delta Force Ranger for Office 365. John co-authored the "SharePoint 2010 Disaster Recovery Guide" in September, 2010 (http://tinyurl.com/SPDR2010book) and the “SharePoint 2007 Disaster Recovery Guide” in January, 2009 (http://www.tinyurl.com/SPDRbook). He is a Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist (MCTS) and a Microsoft Certified IT Professional (MCITP) for several Microsoft server products and platforms, including SharePoint 2007 and 2010, System Center Operations Manager 2007, and Hyper-V Server.  

For more about John, check out the following links:

• Twitter: @ferringer
• Blog: http://www.MyCentralAdmin.com