input:output about an information worker.

Typically, as an evangelist for this technology over the past few years, the major reason for investment in the Enterprise CAL was based in two features: InfoPath/Forms Server and Excel Services. With the advent of the 2010 set, there are several features that I think make the uptake much more valuable for any business or organization.

Office SharePoint Server 2007 Enterprise CAL > SharePoint Server 2010 Enterprise CAL

I’ll go through this in a little more detail.

InfoPath Forms Services (Updated): InfoPath was easily one of my favourite 2007 features. With 2010, while the experience has not changed too much for the client or the browser, Forms Services has been revitalized to handle the load that many organizations are willing to throw at it.

Special note: The InfoPath Web Part gets my gold star for best new out-of-the-box feature. The ability to include a form on a styled page makes Forms Services a much more desirable component to a solution.

Excel Services (Updated): By now, I think that many people are familiar with the updates to Excel 2010, and Excel Services has been updated to match the improvements. I think the improvements to Excel Services, namely in the areas of the REST and Web Services APIs, will hopefully encourage developers to make use of the technology in larger solutions, or in composite applications.

Access Services (New): Yes, it can be said that I am generally most excited about this new addition to the enterprise feature set. It’s simple: publish Access to SharePoint. Make it management, and universally accessible. Awesome.

Business Connectivity Services (Updated, but really - New): Many organizations tried and failed with 2007’s Business Data Catalogue, but from first proof of concepts, BCS has been redeveloped from the group up to truly be useful for developers and partners to implement powerful connections into line of business data.

Visio Services (New): Okay, I lied. I might be most excited about this feature. Visio is my favourite tool in the Microsoft stack, and has been for a while. Why is this exciting? The ability to link workflows to process diagrams, and then publish them to a SharePoint site is going to change how organizations look at SharePoint workflows as an effective tool for enterprise. Previously, this required a very qualified partner and a 3rd party toolset - now, it comes part and parcel with the Enterprise CAL (See some screenshots on the SharePoint 2010 website).

PerformancePoint Services (Updated, but New to SharePoint): They really upped the value of the Enterprise CAL with 2010, and this includes the addition of PerformancePoint. While the dashboarding and BI capabilities of 2007 were very powerful (and generally underused), PP Services allows for the creation of dashboards and scorecards that enable users to get to the right information, at the right time. In 2010, the PP features have been improved from previous versions as well, with elements such as decomposition tree, visualizations and improved filtering.

As well, there are a few other enterprise features, including web analytics and Enterprise-only search features.

Stay tuned for Part 4, SharePoint for Internet Sites.