A great number of industry pundits have speculated as to regardless of whether Windows Vista could be the final big-bang release of Windows. (The answer, as Microsoft officials have repeatedly stated, is no.) I feel they're asking the wrong question. Instead, why not ask whether Windows shall be the center of Microsoft's universe going forward? Might there some other product/products upon which Microsoft is betting the farm? My favorite question during the Q&A session at the end of Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer's Convergence conference keynote address on March 14 sounded deceptively simple. I'm paraphrasing, but the questioner asked Ballmer something like this: "With all the hoopla here at the conference around SharePoint Server,
Office Professional, is it correct to feel 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 enterprise services it is introducing tethered to on-premise software? SharePoint Server will be the solution. 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,
Microsoft Office 2010 Product Key," Ballmer explained. It may be the "missing link" (my words,
microsoft Office 2010 Serial, not his) between personal productivity and line-of-business applications. Ballmer also provided one of the most succinct definitions of SharePoint Server I've heard from any Microsoft exec. SharePoint is just like Office; it's a bunch of point products gathered together into a suite. Although Microsoft is not fond of calling out the six or so servers that comprise Office SharePoint Server,
Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2007, it is a bunch of server apps loosely joined. What are Microsoft Dynamics CRM and Dynamics ERP other than the perfect guinea pigs for Microsoft's attempts to make SharePoint Server the new,
Windows 7 Code, must-have platform for its home business users? Microsoft Organization Solutions (MBS) may be the captive laboratory for Microsoft's Software + Services experiments. Agree? Disagree? Or is SharePoint Server just not on your radar screen (yet)?