One would think it should not be so difficult to find information about the upcoming SharePoint 2010 and the features it will include. I have been especially interested in SharePoint and its inclusion of CMIS (Content Management Interoperability Services). CMIS is an interoperability specification that will allow for compliant clients (such as Joomla! and Drupal) and repositories (such as SharePoint and Alfresco) to interoperate and share content across information silos. For the past few months, I've been keeping my eyes and ears open for any details on the status of Microsoft Sharepoint incorporating CMIS. Sadly, there is little information to be found.
Although Microsoft announced their support for CMIS in September 2008, there has been little word from Microsoft on when we'll see CMIS available for SharePoint users and whether CMIS will be incorporated into SharePoint 2010. Arbindo Chattopadhyay on his MSDN blog recently discussed the benefits of CMIS, but he was very tight lipped whether we'll be seeing CMIS in SharePoint 2010. In fact he doesn't think we'll be hearing much about CMIS in SharePoint until CMIS is out of draft form.
There is currently no news of support of CMIS in next version of SharePoint. CMIS is still in draft form, so I doubt there will be any public announcement of support for CMIS in SharePoint 2010. However, Microsoft is one of the TC members in OASIS working aggressively on CMIS standard. You can read the draft specification by Microsoft
There is also a MSDN article that demonstrates integration of external repository into SharePoint using draft CMIS specification.
There is lot to look forward to and build as soon as CMIS delivers version 1.
With so little details about when we might see SharePoint incorporating CMIS, you really have to dig for the rumors and details. Barb Mosher, CMS Wire, believes that we will see CMIS in SharePoint 2010 or so she she writes in an article giving us an update on CMIS.
We saw their first example of CMIS when we reviewed their efforts to connect SharePoint (MOSS) to an external CMIS repository. While it didn't tell us everything we wanted to know, it was a start.
Microsoft doesn't have a lot of new information they are prepared to share, other than letting us know that SharePoint 2010 will support CMIS. All they will strongly suggest is that we attend the SharePoint conference in October, where all will be revealed about the next generation of SharePoint. Have you bought your ticket?
As Mosher mentions, Microsoft is hoping to wait until the October SharePoint conference before confirming the details in SharePoint 2010. Who does Microsoft they think they are, Apple?
Some details are being provided by bloggers, but a lot of it is still sketchy. About the only really good article I came across on the features to expect in SharePoint 2010 was an article written by Mary Jo Foley at ZDNet, New Microsoft SharePoint 2010 details start to emerge. In Foley's article she provides eight details she believes to be true about SharePoint 2010. This is what she says about CMIS and SharePoint:
CMIS support will allow interoperability between SharePoint 2010 and other content management systems
So what can we conclude from all this? There are plans for Microsoft to provide CMIS support in SharePoint. Microsoft will only suggest but not confirm that SharePoint 2010 will be ready for CMIS. Finally, we're just not quite sure CMIS will be provided in SharePoint 2010 out of the box or later as some type of add-in. Finally, it's a shame we haven't heard about CMIS support being provided for previous versions of SharePoint.