According to recently released documentation, specifically the open specification documentation, Microsoft adds several interesting new features to SharePoint Server 15, AKA SharePoint Server 2013.

Oh, and in case it isn’t bleedingly obvious; don’t make important decisions based on preliinary information. You’ll stand a fair chance of getting burned, but hey, if you’re willing to risk it, that’s entirely up to you.

If you are looking for more bleeding edge information on SharePoint 2013, though, I try to keep up to date and post interesting findings on my twitter account too. You can follow me on @furuknap.

SharePoint Server 2013 keeps many of the existing SharePoint 2010 features, such as:

• Excel Services
• Access Services
• InfoPath Forms Services
• User Profile Service
• Search Services
• Business Connectivity Services
• PerformancePoint Services

These features do get upgrades in both functionality and organization. For example, there’s a new analytics service that seems to allow custom usage reporting, possibly enabling features such as mobile and tablet usage for custom applications. Of course, I’m only speculating at this point.

In addition, however, there are new, or at least radically expanded services, such as:

• Content Management Service
• Translation Services
• Workflow Services
• SharePoint Quiz Client-Side Object Model Protocol
• Education Services
• Work Management Service

To me, being active in the education industry, SharePoint Education looks like a really interesting new component. In short, SharePoint Education is a major addition to SharePoint Server 2013 (or SharePoint Server 15 as it is currently known). The goal, I would assume, is to compete with online and internal training platforms such as Moodle and Blackboard.

I’ll talk much more about SharePoint Education in the second issue of the SharePoint 2013 Beta series of USP Journal. The first issue is available free of charge to members of the USP Journal mailing list, and you can sign up for that to get the first issue now.

If you’d like to read the other issues, however, you have to purchase a subscription and you can do that on the series webpage at http://www.sharepoint2013beta.com/ or directly from this link ($14.95 for the entire series):

SharePoint 2013 Beta series subscription

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Several community comments and a couple of blog posts speculate that SharePoint 15 will have an App store of sorts. Although everything is speculation at this point, there’s clear evidence now that Microsoft will include such an ‘app store’, referred to by Microsoft as “The Marketplace”.

You probably know that Microsoft released literally thousands of pages of documentation on SharePoint 15 (or SharePoint 2013, as I believe it will be called). Most comprehensive is the less intelligible open specification documentation, although that’s also where the good bits are.

You probably also know that I’m highly focused on learning what’s new on any new SharePoint version and that I write a USP Journal series that details this research and the findings. In the first issue, now freely available to members of the USP Journal mailing list, I wrote about the new App store.

You can read more about the series on the SharePoint 2013 Beta series webpage.

Here’s the first part of what I wrote about the new App Marketplace:

New App Store in SharePoint 2013

It seems Microsoft is planning to include a new App store in SharePoint 2013.

An App store, in cased you have been living in a cave in the previous decade, is a marketplace for applications that are easily installable in the environment. Smartphone users have access to such marketplaces already and sales of applications through such app stores are enormous.

You may not know this, but there’s actually already something akin to an App store in SharePoint 2010. When you’re creating a new site, you have the option of looking at Office.com, for example, to find additional downloadable site templates.

However, the current version is barely used and the last time I checked, there was only a single site collection available.

The current App store also works for Sandbox Solutions only, which essentially greatly limits its usefulness for practical applications. Sandbox Solutions, if you don’t know, are limited SharePoint solutions that contain only ‘safe’ functionality, sadly limiting them from many of the powerful features of SharePoint 2010.

Finally, there are no provisions for licensing in the current App store. Naturally, this is a deal-breaker for many vendors as they’re likely not going to want to give away their software without any license control.

The new App store, which Microsoft calls the marketplace, solves all of these issues and looks very promising as a new way of getting and distribution applications both for users and developers.

First, there is a new application model in SharePoint 2013, evident by the inclusion of new classes such as SPApp and SPAppCatalog, plus a range of similar classes. The preliminary functionality seems to focus on deployment of functionality as packages, as well as management of security, licensing, functionality, and custom databases.

Speaking of custom databases, the protocol documentation suggests that custom App databases can be stored in SQL Azure, also known as SQL Server in the cloud.

What’s really cool, however, is that the SDK reveals we will be able to use not just Microsoft as a marketplace, but also other sources. There is a so-called enumeration that lists multiple sources of packages (Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.DatabaseProvider.PackageSource):

• StoreFront
  The package is from the marketplace.
• CorporateCatalog
  The package is from a corporate gallery.
• DeveloperSite
  The package is from a developer site.
• ObjectModel
  The package is loaded via an object model.
• RemoteObjectModel
  The package is uploaded via CSOM.

The latter two options mean that we are also able to programmatically add applications to the marketplace using code, even from the client side (CSOM means Client Site Object Model).

The CorporateCatalog indicates that organizations will be able to build their own internal marketplace where they allow their users to add and install only approved applications.

The DeveloperSite option may indicate that you can also go online to retrieve applications, much like you can on platforms such as WordPress, but instead have those application packages hosted on the developer site.

This, however, isn’t the beginning of the ‘how cool is that’ on the SharePoint 2013 marketplace.

This article is an excerpt from the first issue of the USP Journal  SharePoint 2013 Beta series. The issue contains more on the SharePoint App Marketplace as well as additional information, comments, news, and rumors. You can get the first issue free of charge on the issue web page.

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It’s silly season in the SharePoint community, with rumors flying faster than bullets. There is the odd nugget of information that proves more interesting than others, including one post I found during my weekend searches.

MVP Ruben Alonso published a blog post about being accepted into the Office 15 TAP program, stating that he couldn’t post any screenshots due to the NDA. However, according to the post, and assuming Google translate isn’t playing too many tricks on me, Office 15 is both expected to be released by the end of 2012, it will be named either Office 2012 or Office 2013, and it is definitely “very prepared for a visual interface integrated into Windows 8 Metro”.

Of course, we know from the original announcement about the program that Microsoft will do a massive release including servers and clients for a range of products including SharePoint. That means, if Mr. Alonso is correct, that SharePoint 2013 will release this year and be named either SharePoint 2012 or SharePoint 2013.

I have previously posted my thoughts on the naming thing in a blog post called “Could SharePoint 2013 be SharePoint 2012” and I have elaborated further on the topic in the first issue of my USP Journal series SharePoint 2013 Beta (which is now available, free of charge). In short, I doubt that Microsoft would use the 2012 moniker because it will be released too late in the year to get the marketing effect of being ‘new’.

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PS: I’m starting a mini-series here on the new SharePoint 2013 Marketplace today. A great place to follow along is through my RSS feed.

PPS: As always, assume everything you read about SharePoint 15/2013 is unreliable at this point, but I thought it worth mentioning.