Microsoft positioneert Sharepoint nu ook als Enterprise search product

Microsoft is bezig met een opmars op het gebied van Enterprise Search en ze gebruiken Sharepoint als vervoermiddel.

Enterprise Search Resource Center | SharePoint 2010
Find overviews, how-to topics, and other resources to help you develop and deploy Enterprise Search solutions in SharePoint Server 2010

Het is bijzonder om te zien dat Sharepoint nu in één adem wordt genoemd met "Enterprise Search". Tot dit moment hebben de zoekoplossingen van Microsoft altijd een aparte plek gehad. Denk aan de Microsoft Search Server, Microsoft FAST Search Server etc. Sharepoint wordt zo echter wel een product dat bijna alles schijnt te zijn:
- CMS
- DMS
- Website
- Portaal
- zoekmachine
- samenwerkomgeving
- en wat nog meer?

bron: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/gg618546.aspx

Google Wave and Microsoft Sharepoint... NOT alike

Today I read an article with the title "Can Google succeed outside of search?"

One piece of information got my attention a little bit more:

But Google keeps pushing: Its still-in-beta Google Wave promises to attack one of Microsoft's most beloved products, its SharePoint collaboration software.

To my knowlegde and experience with Google Wave, Wave is an online community platform and not so much a collaboration platform. Yes people can talk to each other, send messages, maybe even share a document through some link, but that is to simple to be compared with sharepoint.

The review of Google Wave vs. Microsoft Sharepoint on the Bamboo team blog makes the difference even clearer:

First of all, the question, "Is Google Wave a SharePoint Killer" is a completely artificial, nonsense argument dreamed up by either the Google PR team and/or the media to generate buzz. Wave is an email client (very tempted to say "consumer email client")... an exciting and innovative one, but it's not a collaboration platform... at least if your definition of collaboration is more sophisticated than sharing pictures from a boating trip. Wave doesn't compete with SharePoint, it competes with Outlook.

That being said, it has occurred to me recently that one of the weaknesses of SharePoint is its failure to account for the fact that email is and will continue to be the fundamental central connective tissue to all collaborative activies. As you might imagine, Bamboo has one of the most sophisticated, tricked-out SharePoint portals in the world, and yet even here, people continue to exchange documents in email and communicate issues in email that *should* be written into a wiki or discussion board. Why? Convenience. So long as it is more convenient to fire off an email than to upload a document or navigate to a message board, that is what people will do. Wave does address this problem head on, and I think introduces a new paradigm that Outlook will have to adopt, quickly.

But an enterprise collaboration platform? Hardly. There is no sign of document management, content management, workflow, data integration, dashboarding etc. etc. If Google truly believes that Wave is a platform for enterprise collaboration, it only serves as proof that they really don't understand the business. Maybe if they fully integrated Wave, Google Sites, Google Apps, Google Gears, Google Calendar in a comprehensive platform... then you might have something. But Microsoft has a big head start in lashing together all of these disparate capabilities and a huge installed base of customers to drive innovation based on real world feedback.

I sometimes wonder if the "reporters" who send out this kind of information to the world, just lack somekind of insight or that thay deliberately say things that are just not correct. Double check your sources and trust your own knowlegde.

Microsoft's FAST and sharepoint integration (SharePoint 2010)

Stephen Arnold has written up an excellent analysis of the information that was given about the coming release of "Fast Search Server 2010 for SharePoint".

Third, there is a reminder to me that SharePoint is a work in progress. I think someone told me that it is the next operating system from Microsoft. The Fast component will be called Fast Search Server 2010 for SharePoint. Now the story gets interesting. Here’s what’s coming:

He then sums up some aspects of the features:

• A content processing pipeline.
  
• Metadata extraction.
  
• Structured data search.
• Visual search.
  
• Advanced linguistics.
  
• Best bets.
  
• Development platform.
  
• Customization.
  

Microsoft has a lot of work to do while their were no live demo's or example that could show these features in action.

Going from one monopolist to another

http://blog.seattlepi.com/microsoft/archives/180794.asp

Google is offering Office productivity tools in de cloud through Google Apps. To my knowlegde they are the only one with such a rich online solution.

When more and more people are going to use Google Apps, the suite is going to be a new standard. That will attract more users because it easier to exchange files in the same format.

And what about the "open-ness" of the Google Apps document format. Sure you can save a document in another format and then open it in that program (let say "Word"). But when you have edited that document with Word, you can not save it as an Google Apps document without trouble. You can upload the file as a new document, but that's not what you want. Also the layout of the document will be messed up...
I say: when you chose for Google Apps you are bound by it, as is the case with the choice for another office suite.

When Google has the biggest user base in the world, will they be not the next monopolist in the market?

Consider this:
The fact that all your data is on their servers is even more creepier.

With the offline Microsoft Office solution your data is still safe in your own network.

At the moment we use Google Apps only for "work in progress" and notes that must be shared or colaborated on.
The final documents and reports we still make and save with Microsoft Office (and Open Office although that causes compatibility issues). The files are safely kept under our own influence.

In the field of defying standards, Google is following Microsoft

I have said it before, and I will say it again: Google is growing out te be the next Microsoft. Driven by shareholders value the company is no longer the underdog. They are starting to set their own standard. The public opinion is changing...

By implementing currently non-standard features on their homepage, Google are
sending out a strong message on what they believe the new standard features
should be, and not coincidently, it is the features that their own browser
implements and supports. This is not the first time Google has sent a
wrecking-ball into the standards process. Google Gears was launched long before
Chrome as a way to implement proposed HTML5 standards, such as offline caching,
into browsers (see my NextGenWeb series from last year). It was born out of frustration
for the slow and beurocratic standardization process ¿ something that Google
couldn't afford to wait for as their web applications could not advance further
without a non-aligned platform to build them on.
A large part of the
anti-trust case against Microsoft was that with combined desktop, browser and server
market dominance the company could abuse that position to make the web a
Microsoft web by implementing Microsoft-only features. Google are using their
dominance to force an issue that has been stalled for far too long ¿ but the
difference is that they are using their force for potentially a greater good (I
hope). The theoretical Microsoft web would have been "this website only supports
Internet Explorer", whereas with Google so far we have "this website is a lot
better, and has sexy buttons, if you use Chrome (which btw is open source)".

source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/08/AR2009100800192.html