(BANFF, AB) I think Sharepoint is definitely the category killer for portals and content management systems and the intersection of both kinds of products. But I’m not a real fan of the product. I think its too simplistic and becoming too broad (but it works for some, but not for all organizations). So broad in fact that Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has admitted that he sees Sharepoint as the new operating system (OS) for the middle tier.

One of my team (thanks Julian) came across this column on Info World (see

Sharepoint: Microsoft's new operating system):

I've been beating on the Sharepoint drum for nearly two years now, but this is the first time I've seen anyone outside the ECM industry think along the same lines. Sharepoint is very clearly the future of Microsoft. And, not coincidentally, it is the future of how Microsoft locks customers into its software (benevolently or malevolently - you choose).

Mary Jo Foley writes:

My favorite question during the Q&A session at the end of Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer's Convergence conference keynote address on March 15 sounded deceptively simple...."With all the hoopla here at the conference around SharePoint Server, is it correct to think of SharePoint as almost like an OS (operating system)"?

Bingo.

Microsoft officials increasingly are talking up "Software + Services," as opposed to "Software as a Service" in explaining Microsoft's future. So how does Microsoft keep the growing family of business services it is introducing tethered to on-premise software?

SharePoint Server is the answer. Not Windows. Not Windows Server. Not Office. SharePoint.

Ballmer told the Convergence questioner he was dead-on in his thinking.

"SharePoint is the definitive OS or platform for the middle tier," Ballmer explained. It is the "missing link" (my words, not his) between personal productivity and line-of-business applications.

I like to think of Sharepoint as the tool used to make the document formats debate irrelevant. Open the formats, but close the document/content network, and we're back at the beginning, with many years of milking monopoly rents.

There is no future for Documentum. Vignette. Interwoven. Filenet. Etc. But there is a future for Sharepoint, and for the open source competition. (Open source ECM has become highly strategic to a growing number of Global 2000 companies.) Sharepoint is exploding into the enterprise - $0 to $1B in just four years.

The only thing that will stop it, and thereby keep enterprise content where it belongs - in enterprise hands - is open source.

Interesting that this columnist thinks that the likes of Vignette, FileNet, etc. are working on borrowed time. I couldn’t agree more. Either the company serves a niche or it’s Microsoft, IBM or Oracle. Vignette can’t compete with Microsoft in the long-term trying to be everything to everyone.

Speaking of Microsoft, I’m now on Windows Vista… and words alone can’t express how much I despise it!!!! I’m only biding my time now until I find the time to remove it and all my files to reinstall Windows XP. Vista is NOT more Apple-like – it’s far more complicated and extraordinarily difficult to use. Oh, it’s certainly a lot more pretty, but it’s painfully unfriendly.