SharePoint pioneer looks back on the beginning, scouts the future

'SharePoint Joel' was first SharePoint admin for Microsoft IT

Everyone knows him as "SharePoint Joel," the first-ever SharePoint administrator for Microsoft's IT department.

Joel Oleson is now a senior product architect for Quest Software but he has fond memories of his days working with a project that would grow to become SharePoint. And humble beginnings they were, with a server running under a desk and a data center manager who wanted nothing to do with the code running on his environment.

Oleson and Network World Senior Editor John Fontana met in an empty conference center cavern at the Mandalay Bay hotel in Las Vegas to talk about the evolution of SharePoint from its early days to where it is today on the cusp of 2010 version.

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Everyone knows him as "SharePoint Joel," the first-ever SharePoint administrator for Microsoft's IT department.

Joel Oleson is now a senior product architect for Quest Software but he has fond memories of his days working with a project that would grow to become SharePoint. And humble beginnings they were, with a server running under a desk and a data center manager who wanted nothing to do with the code running on his environment.

Oleson and Network World Senior Editor John Fontana met in an empty conference center cavern at the Mandalay Bay hotel in Las Vegas to talk about the evolution of SharePoint from its early days to where it is today on the cusp of 2010 version.

Follow John on Twitter.

Read more about software in Network World's Software section.