SharePoint 2010 Best Practices

• Developing Applications for SharePoint 2010 - Developing Applications for SharePoint 2010 contains guidance documentation, detailed examples, and a reusable class library. These resources are designed to help solution developers and architects make the right decisions and follow proven practices when designing and developing applications for SharePoint 2010. The guidance focuses primarily on the building blocks that every developer needs to understand to become an effective SharePoint developer or architect
• SharePoint Server 2010 Usage Best Practices White Paper: In this white paper, you will learn how to manage content effectively, how to choose the best option for displaying content, and the most effective way to find your content later.
• Sharepoint Server 2010 Adoption Best Practices White Paper: In this white paper, you will learn how to plan, organize, and create a SharePoint adoption plan
• SharePoint 2010 Governance Planning (white paper): this white paper uses a fictitious company named Contoso to provide guidance for the necessary governance planning and implementation of SharePoint Server 2010
• SharePoint Server 2010 Operations Framework and Checklists (white paper): This document details the operational processes, tasks, and tools that are required to operate and maintain a Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 environment. It explains how the management of SharePoint Server 2010 fits in with the overall Microsoft Operations Framework (MOF) model

SharePoint 2010 Introduction Videos

• What's New in SharePoint 2010 - learn about all of the new developer features in the SharePoint platform including tools, team sites, UI enhancements and a brief look back to understand how the SharePoint developer story has improved
• How SharePoint 2010 Works - covers software and hardware requirements, and the basic concepts of Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010
• What Can SharePoint Do For You? - Hear from SharePoint 2010 customers - Global Crossing, Associated Press, and many more. From ECM and WCM, to Collaboration and Search, SharePoint 2010 is delivering real results to our customers
• What Can SharePoint 2010 Do for Me? - introduces Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 capabilities to IT professionals. Concepts covered include document sharing, lists, alerts, team sites, metadata, and more
• SharePoint 2010 for Developers - hear how professional developers at Microsoft customers and Partners take advantage of new features in SharePoint 2010. In this segment we hear from Raymond James, Nintex and Intergen. They talk about the new Visual Studio 2010SharePoint developer tools, about business connectivity services for line of business data access and about Silverlight and the Client APIs for rich user interface.
• SharePoint 2010 for IT Professionals - SharePoint 2010's new features and flexible deployment help IT Professionals improve productivity. Hear how these improvements benefit Raymond James and HP
• SharePoint 2010 Communities: Allow Users to Connect, Innovate and Share - Social computing promotes sharing and openness within communities. Learn from customers how their enhanced people-centric collaboration solutions empowered their users and improved performance within the organization.
• Increasing user productivity with SharePoint 2010 Search - General Mills created a state of the art research portal designed to simplify and expedite the researching process. Taking advantage of the conversational, visual and contextual capabilities of search, General Mills employees can make better informed and effective decisions, leading to new revenue opportunities
• SharePoint Server 2010 for Internet Sites Drives Revenue - See how Seek.com brings job seekers, employers, and advertisers together.
• Internet Digital Marketing with SharePoint 2010 - Digital Marketers today need to launch an increasing amount of websites quickly and easily. SharePoint 2010 shows marketers how to be competitive and build their business through digital marketing.

SharePoint 2010 Evaluation Guides

• SharePoint 2010 Overview Evaluation Guide: Introduction and overview of SharePoint Server 2010
• SharePoint Server 2010 Walkthrough Guide: This walkthrough guide is designed to provide a step-by-step overview of Microsoft SharePoint 2010
• SharePoint Server 2010 Evaluation Guide : Introduction and overview of SharePoint Server 2010 for IT pros
• SharePoint 2010: Professional Developer Evaluation Guide and Walkthroughs: The SharePoint 2010 developer evaluation guide describes the SharePoint 2010 developer platform, including walkthroughs of some of the new capabilities for developers
• Search Technologies for SharePoint 2010 Products: Compares and contrasts search technologies in SharePoint 2010 Products
• SharePoint Server 2010 Enterprise Search Evaluation Guide: Describes the enterprise search features provided by Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010
• FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint Evaluation Guide: Describes the enterprise search features provided by Microsoft FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint.
• Office 2010: Product Guides: The Office 2010 product guides provide an overview of what's new in your favorite Microsoft Office programs and a deeper look at benefits across all Office 2010 programs, as well as Office Web Apps and Office Mobile 2010
• Compare Office Professional Plus 2010 and the 2007 suite : Gives you an idea of how Office Professional Plus 2010 compares to Office Professional Plus 2007
• Collaboration without compromise - SharePoint and Office 2010: The scenarios outlined in this paper show examples of how the power of SharePoint 2010 and related servers can be combined with capabilities of one or more Microsoft Office 2010 applications to deliver rich, intuitive, and easy-to-use capabilities directly into the hands of information workers

Performance and Capacity planning guidance for SharePoint 2010

Following white papers and case studies have been published recently on the Microsoft Download Center to provide guidance on performance and capacity planning for SharePoint 2010. That's 300+ pages of information to digest!! Nice way to spend next few weeks :-)
1) SharePoint Server 2010 performance and capacity test results and recommendations -  describe the performance and capacity impact of specific feature sets included in Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010:

• Access Services
• Large Lists
• Divisional Portal
• InfoPath
• Performance Point Services
• Search
• Word Automation Services (WAS)
• Web Content Management (WCM)
• Workflow

2) Capacity management and sizing for SharePoint Server 2010 - helps you determine the appropriate capacity for your Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 environment. This white paper provides you with the information that helps you:

• Understand the concepts behind effective capacity management
• Define performance and capacity targets for your environment
• Select the appropriate data architecture
• Choose hardware to support the number of users and the features you intend to deploy
• Test, validate, and adjust your environment to achieve your performance and capacity targets
• Monitor and adjust your environment to match demand

3) SharePoint Server 2010 capacity management: software boundaries and limits - provides information to help you understand the tested performance and capacity limits of SharePoint Server 2010, and offers guidelines for how limits relate to acceptable performance. Use this info to determine whether your planned deployment falls within acceptable performance and capacity limits, and to properly configure limits in your environment.

4) SharePoint Server 2010 performance and capacity technical case studies - Technical case studies that describe specific deployments of Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010. Compare the scenarios in these documents to your planned workload and usage characteristics. If your planned design is similar, you can use the documented deployment as a starting point for your own installation.

Experiencing Office Web Apps in SkyDrive

Microsoft Office Web Apps are online companions to Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote, enabling people to access and do light editing or sharing of Office documents from virtually anywhere. Office Web Apps is available to consumers and businesses through:

1. SkyDrive in Windows Live: For consumers and small business users, Office Web Apps is available on Windows Live as a free service through SkyDrive offering
2. On-premises using SharePoint 2010: Business customers licensed for Microsoft Office 2010 through a Volume Licensing program can run Office Web Apps on a server running Microsoft SharePoint Foundation 2010 or Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010.

To understand the user experience and features in both cases, you can refer to Using Office Web Apps in Windows Live and Using Office Web Apps in SharePoint pages in the Office 2010 product information and support website.

Microsoft Office Web Apps Deployment Resource Center
Microsoft Office Web Apps Deployment resource center has been launched recently which provides tools and resources for IT professionals planning to deploy Office Web Apps in a SharePoint environment.

The Understanding Office Web Apps and Introduction to working with Office Web Apps provide a good technical background before you start the Office Web Apps deployment in an enterprise. Refer to the Deploy Office Web Apps (Installed on SharePoint 2010 Products) article to learn to deploy Microsoft Office Web Apps.