Microsoft shifts collaboration gears

Microsoft this week repositioned its SharePoint team collaboration offering with a name change and plans to tie the platform to Windows Server 2003 as well as other products such as Office 11 and OneNote.

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The move is designed to create a scalable platform for team collaboration that is tightly coupled with the company's .Net framework, allowing it to be exposed through XML Web services, according to Jay Paulus, lead product manager for Windows Servers. A platform approach will help break down the limits of file sharing, he said.

"From a Windows perspective it is exciting to add this to the platform technology list. For a long time people have shared documents using file shares, but file sharing is just not enough in today's world. You need a platform for collaboration,"Paulus said.

Now dubbed Windows SharePoint Services, the offering is a component-based platform designed for creating collaborative Web sites focused on information sharing and team collaboration. Every SharePoint Services site is made up of server-side ASP .Net controls called Web Parts, which simplifies the connection to other applications and tools, according to Microsoft officials in Redmond, Wash.

In addition, the integration of Windows SharePoint Services into other products such as Office 11, InfoPath, OneNote, FrontPage, and SharePoint Portal Server will inject team collaboration capabilities into the applications where workers spend time.

In Office 11 users can take advantage of two new features in Windows SharePoint Services: Meeting Workspaces and Document Workspaces, both designed to bolster ad-hoc teamwork. Document Workspace includes a check-in/check-out feature that lets multiple workers collaborate on the same document without overwriting each other's changes, according to Erik Ryan, product manager. The Document Workspace also connects to SharePoint site that provides access to shared task lists, calendars, discussions, and new Meeting Workspaces.

The SharePoint Portal server fits into the story by providing a means to organize and manage multiple Windows SharePoint Team sites, according toPaulus.

"Depending on the complexity and number of SharePoint Team sites, the [SharePoint] portal creates the infrastructure to connect all those together in a structured fashion," he said.

According to Matt Cain, analyst at Meta Group, in Stamford, Conn. , Microsoft's move to bundle SharePoint Services directly into the server OS will help lower the barrier to adoption for many companies that will gain the functionality as a piece of system software.

"Clearly this is Microsoft's attempt to jumpstart itself in the market. Quite frankly, up until now SharePoint [Team Services] has been very much of a technical laggard compared to other offerings like eRoom or SiteScape or lotus QuickPlace," Cain said.

Furthermore, Microsoft's strategic re-positioning is well timed, as Meta Group expects to see rapid growth in the team workspace software market, with 90 percent of knowledge workers tapping into shared team space functionality by 2007.

"If you look at the current way projects get done, you have faxes, e-mails, paper documents, calendar appointments all on different systems. It is really very unproductive," Cain said. "We very much believe this whole notion of teamware [can] aggregate disparate communication mechanisms into one common space. This really helps project teams become far more efficient."

Ed Scannell contributed to this article