Happy 25th birthday, SharePoint! 🎉

This article is my love letter to the 25-year-old workhorse in the Microsoft ecosystem - SharePoint. Let me take you on a wild ride through my personal journey and love-hate relationship with SharePoint!

Intro

So on March 2nd, 2026, SharePoint turned 25 years old. It can now not only drive, but also vote and drink - hopefully not at the same time, even if drinking and voting DOES sound like a great time!

My first day job in 2011 was a SharePoint developer. I jumped in COLD with only Java development experience, having to learn all of the quirks of SharePoint 2010 development on the fly. That was during the time when Microsoft positioned SharePoint as an "application development platform" - and boy oh boy was it easy to bring the whole farm down with some poorly tested farm solution deployments!

And bring them down I did, far more than once. Those were the days, am I right? 😅

Let's just call the first year a great learning experience, and leave it at that 🙃

Of course, occasionally I'd also have to work on MOSS (SharePoint 2007), but the bulk of my early career was spent on SharePoint 2010, and then later on SharePoint 2013 and 2016.

I might've missed SharePoint's first steps (and a couple of years after that), but I sure have been there for the majority of its life so far. And it has certainly been there for me! 😅

From application development platform to the very foundation of Microsoft 365

To see why SharePoint still matters, let's walk through how its role has shifted over the years.

The role of SharePoint has evolved from being the all-around application development platform (a role which enterprises abused to unimaginable lengths) to being the content management and collaboration platform that it was in the 2013-2016 era, to the content service role (especially for Teams) it primarily fulfilled until the few last years.

Finally, it took up the role to act as the backend and - dare I say - foundation for Work IQ, the intelligence layer behind Microsoft 365 Copilot and other agentic experiences on top of Microsoft 365.

I've harbored a strong love-hate relationship with SharePoint over the years. With all of its quirks and issues, it's been a staple in my professional life for practically all of my career.

It's been fun (and "fun") seeing how organizations use and abuse SharePoint in the most creative ways, and how Microsoft has evolved the platform to meet the changing needs of its users - or, as is often the case, to try and create new needs. Microsoft has had varying degrees of success in anticipating where their customers need to be in 1-5 years, but SharePoint has been a key part of that journey.

This blog, too, got its start as a place for me to share the random SharePoint-related things I needed to document mostly for myself - hence the name, #SharePointProblems.

A physical journey with SharePoint 🤔

Beyond the code, SharePoint also shaped where I worked and the communities I joined.

From the early days of custom farm solutions to whatever you should call the .agent files now, SharePoint has been there for the development-curious to tinker and experiment with.

But it hasn't only been a learning and development journey - it's also been a physical journey for me. I started my career in Finland, but SharePoint took me to the US and Canada, where I lived and worked for several years.

Joining Valo in 2017(-ish) enabled me to move abroad and have some of the most hectic and rewarding years of my life. Those years allowed me to attend sooo many community events in North America - first as a sponsor, but then increasingly as a speaker too.

Since then, I've had the privilege of speaking at many events across the US and Canada, and lately in Europe - and I feel like I've kind of got SharePoint to thank for it 😅

And I'd be remiss not to mention that it also sparked my interest and deep appreciation for the United States of America - an incredibly beautiful country with fascinating history and culture, and some of the nicest people I've ever met.

While I was living in North America, I took the chance to travel the continent - and so far, I've had the chance to visit 39 of the 50 states.

... maybe some day it feels safe enough to visit the remaining 11 states as well 😅

And even though I ended up moving back to Finland in 2019, after the dissolution of Valo and a quick stint at Etteplan, I ended up working for another SharePoint-adjacent product company, Omnia, again solving similar issues for similar clients.

Even after all these years, I still find myself working with SharePoint... 😂

What's next for SharePoint?

With that history as context, here’s where I think SharePoint is headed next.

Microsoft is positioning SharePoint as the secret sauce behind Work IQ, which in turn is the intelligence layer for Microsoft 365 Copilot. While it's difficult to predict how big the AI revolution will finally end up being, I think SharePoint is going to be one of the key products in the Microsoft ecosystem simply riding the wave.

At Omnia, we're building for that same next wave of AI-powered experiences on top of Microsoft 365, and SharePoint (especially through aforementioned Work IQ) is a key part of that puzzle.

In short: SharePoint has evolved, adapted, and looks set to stay... And say what you will, I think that's worth celebrating.

Happy birthday, SharePoint! Here's to the next 25 years! 🎉🎂🎈

Want to take part in the celebrations? Here are some fun ways to do that:

• Participate in the SharePoint Birthday Hackathon: https://github.com/sharePoint/sharepoint-hackathon
• Check out the SharePoint 25th birthday website: https://adoption.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/birthday/
• Share your SharePoint stories and memories on social media using the hashtag #SPat25 !