MSFT Worldwide Partner Conference 2005
Well, I am trapped up here in MPLS … for those not aware I am attending the MSFT Worldwide Partner Conference.
*MSFT bought Groove.
Interesting if you ask me. comments from the audience was mixed. one individual, that said they sat on the partner advisory group, thought that the move was more a market share play since many of the features of groove seemed to overlap with the planned set of stuff in Office12 or O12 as they liked to refer to it as. Once thing is clear. MSFT wants to move the collaboration solution of SPS into a model that supports: team based projects, mobile, online/offline, rich client, and cross team knowledge sharing. Only the first and last item are really SPS now. They quoted quite a few wins in the goverment sector w/ Groove (Homeland Security, Florida Emergency Management, etc). They are also excited it seems on info path and Groove … hoping that the business value of users doing infopath based forms (where data is captured w/ an XML structure transparent to the keyer) instead of manual forms catches on.
*Webparts Baby
They are consolidating on webparts as the UI layer for: SPS, Commerce Server, Groove, and CM Server. So we shoud continue to try and understand that delivery model
*Website, Any Website, SPS
MSFT is going into the ECM space w/ Office12 and SPS. Much of that was known but they are making strong statements. In effect, they want SPS to be the framework for any website in the organization. CM Server is going to be absorbed by SPS. A nice vision. If they pull it off it could be really something.
*Competitive SPS Review
Spent about 1 hour in break out groups here. They want to push interop at this time (can work in j2ee environments). They acknowleged the partners need to create or be provided better business scenario demos (IBM specifically does well with this). They are looking at building in more ‘functional silo’ webparts … basically to counter the delivered portals that come w/ the major ERP solutions and on install have business transaction content visable. Key competitive stance was the departmental solution. I didn’t hear a strong counter to the enterprise model that IBM, Documentum, SAP, ORCL, or Plumtree have right now. Note, ORCL wasn’t seen as a major player in the portal space by them.
*#1 Search on Forrestor in Portals is Sharepoint?
They claimed that Forrestor is reporting that the # search in thier portal category is how to get value out of WSS (free version of sharepoint). Indicates a market is forming here in my view (clients are dipping toe in with free version).
*Workflow out of BizTalk
Workflow is coming out of BizTalk and will be a core service in the Office12 framework. So base routing / approvals will be available for all kinds of stuff in the core system. Very interesting.
*Worried about Google
They are investing in search but I didn’t see any notable changes. Talked a couple of times about Google as the driver. Interesting. They must perceive Google trying to apply thier relevancy / search method to enterprise documents (ie how to create virtual linkages between docs to enhance importance of certain docs.).
*TAP
They are looking for a partner (30 actually) to be TAPs around SPS. Technology Adopt Program. Basically gives you free training on Office12 development. G&R would need to dedicate a team of 3. I am pondering pitching an ECM angle to them since we have a pretty robust pipeline in that space and that is where they are trying to go w/ the O12 release.
Guess that does it. Let me know if you have questions.
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