Microsoft’s new operating system = SharePoint + cloud services

October 28, 2009

While attending Microsoft’s SharePoint 2009 Conference in Las Vegas last week, I discussed how Microsoft has established Competitive Positioning with a partner ecosystem that is second to none. This is further supported by InfoWorld’s recent interview with Jeff Teper, Microsoft’s corporate vice president of SharePoint Server, entitled ‘Swiss Army Knife‘. Editor Paul Krill talked with Jeff about the new release of SharePoint 2010 and its relationship to the open source movement, as well as other aspects of the platform.

Beyond Microsoft’s traditional developer community, they have drawn scores of open source developers (upwards of 1000 open source apps) built on the SharePoint platform according to CodePlex. Microsoft has made this easy via Web services and REST and Atom, which expose standard protocols for SharePoint so that you can build apps in front of it on Windows Server.

Also fueling this growth is Microsoft’s much anticipated link between Windows Azure cloud platform and SharePoint. While both are part of Microsoft Online, developers will be drinking Microsoft’s cool aid of software + services and creating some compelling applications that drive the new buzz factor, while Creating Competitive Advantage.

Meanwhile, no one is slowing down for Microsoft. Google is trying to attack them on many fronts, including its Google Search Appliance aimed at the enterprise, including better SharePoint integration and a wide array of cloud-based services to enterprises looking to dismantle themselves from the desktop. Matt Asay of CNET News best describes it in Google competes for the future; Microsoft, the past.

Microsoft’s way of holding off the threat from Google and others is SharePoint. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has described it as Microsoft’s new operating system. In his recent interview with Forrester, he compares it to the PC. The PC started off life as a spreadsheet machine, then became a programming machine, a word processing machine, a general purpose infrastructure that connect people and people to information. This makes SharePoint a serious development platform and Microsoft’s best attempt to connect desktop applications like Office with centralized, cloud collaboration and storage.

Lastly, Channel Inside reports that VARs eyeing a cut of the cloud craze should take a closer look at Intermedia, Ingram Micro’s new partner in cloud-based email and collaboration tools. The two companies announced this week that they inked a deal to offer Intermedia’s hosted Microsoft email and collaboration solutions to Ingram Micro’s vast reseller community through Ingram Micro’s Seismic platform. The cloud solution is designed for midsize and small businesses and includes hosted SharePoint, Exchange 2007 and Microsoft CRM Dynamics solutions.

Time to rip another page out of this book..

Key Account Director

Marc Barry is an experienced sales leader in the Enterprise Technology Industry including Software, Cloud and Consulting. Currently, he is the Key Account Director at <a href="http://www.oracle.com">Oracle</a>. He was previously a Venture Partner at OpenView.