Business Intelligence is a core part of SharePoint 2010. Its much more than just a content management system. SharePoint 2010 has the following new features:
Business Connectivity Services
- Connect SharePoint solutions to external data
- Define external content types based on external data
- http://technet.microsoft.com/en-ca/library/ee661738.aspx
Central Administration Redesign
- Interface is much more intuitive
- UI now uses the well known Ribbon Toolbar
Claim-Based Authentication
- New authentication model
- Works with any corporate identity system (AD, LDAP)
- http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc262881.aspx
Health Monitoring
- Analyzes and repair problems
- Allows you to view metrics for sites
- http://technet.microsoft.com/en-ca/library/ee748625.aspx
Sandboxed Solutions
- Deploy solutions onto the Farm or into a sandbox
- Sandbox is a restricted environment which can be used to control and limit resources for a solution
- Some solutions may not work in a sandbox and are better suited for a Farm deployment
- http://technet.microsoft.com/en-ca/library/ee704543.aspx
If you are planning on installing and setting up a SharePoint site I recommend checking out the following training videos from Microsoft:
Installing SharePoint 2010 (54 minutes):
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-ca/sharepoint/ee518665.aspx
Setting up Your First Web App (24 minutes):
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-ca/sharepoint/ee518671.aspx
I reviewed these videos and had no problems setting up a couple of web applications. I don’t recommend setting up a VM (it must be 64-bit for one thing) to run on your laptop or desktop. You will want to create the VM on a server and assign it at least 4 GB of memory. This requirement may increase if you are using a Full SQL Server Stack (Analysis Services, Reporting Services etc.) for a Business Intelligence evaluation.
My next little project will be to use Business Connectivity Services and build a simple application using external data from SQL Server 2008.
Troy