Thoughts from the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference

Microsoft held its Worldwide Partner Conference at the new Convention Center in Boston last month.  Several thousand Microsoft partners heard keynote addresses from Steve Ballmer and other Microsoft executives, attended seminars, worked with software in labs, and saw the latest offerings from Microsoft and other vendors on the exhibit floor.

Here are some observations from me and the KMA team who attended the conference.  The observations are from the perspective of an IT manager who would like to better understand how Microsoft and its partners can improve the effectiveness of their organization.

1. SharePoint is and will continue to be a key server technology for Microsoft.  It is the server platform that will be the basis for document and content management systems, corporate intranets and extranets, team collaboration sites, and business process automation.  It is being tightly integrated with the desktop Office products for document storage and retrieval, process automation, business intelligence and collaboration.  It is also tightly integrated with SQL Server and with Windows new workflow capabilities.  It will replace the shared server drives for document storage.
2. While SharePoint is a key product, it is still relatively immature.  Many key capabilities are not in the current SharePoint version.  Some will be included in the next version--SharePoint 2007.  I saw many small companies selling SharePoint add-ons. For key tasks like synchronizing two instances of SharePoint on different servers.  SharePoint is not yet the answer for many key business needs.
3. Organizations, working with Microsoft and its partners, can improve the efficiency and effectiveness of their knowledge workers through the deployment and customization of Office 2007 (the desktop products plus SharePoint).  Based on some IDC research, Microsoft estimated that the market for partners for deploying and customizing Office was close to $150 billion.  Key areas are collaboration (including Groove), business intelligence, and smart Client (Office automation).
4. Microsoft is moving inexorably forward with its strategy to commoditize (or democratize) business intelligence.  SQL 2005 has strong capabilities for data analysis and reporting.  Microsoft is supplementing this with stronger ties to Excel 2007 for data analysis and with PerformancePoint a tool for financial planning and building scorecards.

The next year should be an exciting one for a partner like KMA that specializes in knowledge management, business intelligence and smart client applications.  It should also be a good year for an IT manager who would like to use the Microsoft toolset (with the help bof a qualified partner) to improve the efficeincy and effectiveness of his or her organization.