The end of an era with Microsoft SharePoint Server 2013
Microsoft recently announced the end of SharePoint 2013 Enterprise Server support. The announcement brought up some nostalgia in terms of how far SharePoint has come and our appreciation for such an influential and innovative product.
Before SharePoint 2013: The start for Lydon Solutions
We started our company developing and hosting construction solutions first on SharePoint 2007 and then quickly switching to 2010 before moving our first client to production. As a new company trying to survive in the highly competitive technology sector, we encountered many challenges. I remember those late and sleepless nights. At that time, we used out-of-the-box tools like InfoPath 2007 for forms and SharePoint Designer 2010 for workflows and supplemented where possible with third-party apps. Also, we used a SharePoint hosting company where we “rented” dedicated servers. We knew we had a good idea using SharePoint for managing construction projects, and through trial and error, we willed the technology to work. It was an exciting time.
Success with SharePoint 2013
Fast forward a few years. Microsoft announces SharePoint 2013 and their new cloud platform Microsoft Azure. We had a decision to make: do we continue with 2010, which we were just getting familiar with, and stay with an external hosting company or make the jump to SharePoint 2013 and do our own hosting in Azure? We decided on the latter, spinning up our own data center in Azure and delivering solutions using InfoPath 2013, Designer 2013, third-party apps, and JavaScript. We now owned the entire value chain, which allowed us to provide turnkey solutions for our clients.
SharePoint 2013 was ahead of its time with the ability to configure and customize the product for any industry. It was widely adopted across the world as the leading enterprise content management solution. Everyone had it, but not everyone knew how to use it. There were no guideposts, no how-to manuals. Through trial and error, you earned your stars and stripes. There were so many interconnected switches and considerations that It was like being a mechanic working on a formula one sports car. With SharePoint 2013 and a little JavaScript, we felt empowered to build any solution we could envision. We delivered our solutions to multi-billion-dollar projects and programs for the next seven years. It was a fantastic time. At the end of 2021, we decommissioned our last instance of SharePoint 2013.
Gone but not forgotten
Change is in the DNA of a technology company. Technology comes and goes, and you are always chasing after what you think the future will be. For Lydon Solutions, SharePoint has always been there. While we have since moved to Microsoft 365 SharePoint Online, I will always look back with great fondness and appreciation for what SharePoint 2013 gave us.
Thank you, Microsoft.
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