SharePoint shacks up with Office. “Microsoft plans to add its SharePoint business portal software to its Office bundle, as the company looks to broaden the appeal of its desktop software.” according to CNET News.com
Intriguing. As I noted some time ago, many developers have been delivering systems using portions of Office for many years. With the Sharepoint services (formerly Microsoft SharePoint Team Services) built into Microsoft (formerly .NET) Server 2003 (formerly 2002), Microsoft may have hit upon a winning combination for ease of enterprise-wide distribution, versioning and tracking. Or, like the Exchange extensions last time and the previous versions of SharePoint, they may be flailing for a problem to fit their solution. I’m having a really hard time figuring out if Microsoft is really coming up with a coordinated plan to provide enterprise-wide services (the new decade of the 2000s, turning-over-the-leaf plan) (vs. the workgroup and desktop applications thay have been shipping) or whether they are just throwing everything against the wall and seeing what sticks, the plan that got them through the nineties.