I wrote before about how cool the Office products that are coming are going to be, but just to expand on some of the items that popped out of the presentation.
SharePoint has really taken on a complete focal point. It will become the center of how a company creates community and aligns it’s business processes and people to improve productivity. The current version of SharePoint has proven it’s value and flexibility. The real value of this Office 2007 suite is it’s ability to allow fast integration to prove in a solid business case, and the same old extensibility is enhanced because of the improvements to the Office core apps, like Excel, Word, and PPT. The Web Part concept is still valid.
Couple of observations about Office 2007. The danger that Microsoft faces is that they have over-innovated. I’m just not sure that their customers understand the power of what they have in their enterprise with the Office 2003 product set, and I fear that we’ll have similar objections with the Office 2007. Bottom line is that most users of this stuff can’t absorb much more innovation.
The challenge we have when we talk to our clients about SharePoint is that the clients don’t have an immediate need for SharePoint. Collaboration isn’t the same type of ‘automatic’ business case as an ERP or CRM or email business case. However, this is the opportunity for me. We’ve got to put a bunch of effort into helping our clients understand how to get more value out of this software they’re buying.
