30 Minute Interview

It’s all about sharing

Jeff Teper, Corporate VP, Office Business Platform, Microsoft talked to Express Computer about Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and how content management and enterprise search is a growing business for Microsoft.

Jeff Teper

Enterprise Search

Office SharePoint Server is one of the fastest growing server businesses in Microsoft’s history. This line of business generated revenues of over $800 million in the 2007 fiscal, due to the increasing number of businesses turning to it as the centerpiece of their productivity infrastructure and the strong demand for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007. This represents a growth rate of more than 35% over fiscal 2006. Key new areas like Search are driving tremendous partner opportunities. More than 3,600 partners enrolled in Quickstart for the Microsoft Search partner program.

Enhanced features and components in Office SharePoint Server 2007 provide ways to connect people, process, and information. It helps to manage and control unstructured content like Microsoft Office documents, Web pages, Portable Document Format file (PDF) files, and e-mail messages. Its search component helps organization to find information and expertise wherever they are located. The organization can share knowledge within and across organizational boundaries.

The content management features in Office SharePoint Server 2007 fall within three areas, document management, records management, Web content management. The core document management functionality provided by Windows SharePoint Services 3.0, including check in and check out, versioning, metadata, and role-based granular access controls enables organizations to deliver authoring, business document processing, Web content management and publishing, records management, policy management, and support for multilingual publishing.

For developers

The Office SharePoint Server 2007 BI platform provides Web and programmatic access to published Microsoft Office Excel worksheets, programmatic reuse of critical line-of-business data, and development of Web-based BI dashboards that can incorporate, data-bound key performance indicators, Web Parts, and published worksheets.

Microsoft Office InfoPath Forms Services technologies that are included in the Server 2007 enable organizations to streamline form-driven business processes through XML-based electronic forms which integrate smoothly with existing systems. This client/server platform enhances security, enables rapid solution creation and deployment, centralizes form management and maintenance, and helps to extend business processes to customers, partners, and suppliers.

Focus areas

Microsoft is planning to focus on all enterprises, especially the IT services and construction business as in these verticals, a huge amount of communication takes place between an organization and its customers, suppliers and partners requiring a secure site. The product has two kinds of licenses—Windows SharePoint services which entails no additional cost and Enterprise SharePoint services for intranet services that is an additional cost.