SharePoint 2010 to Launch Ahead of Schedule in May & SharePoint 2010 Training Portal Now Available

In case you haven’t already heard the happy news, the launch date of SharePoint 2010 has been moved up from the previously reported June release, and will be arriving a month earlier in May. Microsoft has announced that the official launch date for both SharePoint 2010 and Office 2010 has been set for May 12, with Release to Manufacturing (RTM) intended to occur in April.

Earlier this week, Paul Andrew, Microsoft Technical Product Manager for the SharePoint Developer Platform, announced that Microsoft Learning has published their SharePoint Training Portal for 2010, which includes information regarding the availability of special offers, certification, classroom training, Microsoft E-Learning, books from Microsoft Press, and Silverlight “learning snacks.” Currently available are a pair of two-hour “What’s New in SharePoint 2010” e-learning clinics (one for IT professionals; the other for developers) which are being made available free for a limited time. The Silverlight learning snacks are free bite-size nuggets of SharePoint 2010 learning, and there are currently three SharePoint 2010-related snacks available, each with a running time of not more than twenty minutes.

Additionally, in his blog post on Traning from Microsoft on SharePoint 2010, Paul Andrew mentions that he’s “just in the process of updating the free eLearning for SharePoint developers.”