Microsoft's varied collaboraboration platform strategies: More comments from Billg and StevenSi
Checkout the live webcast @ http://www.microsoft.com/seminar/shared/asp/view.asp?url=/seminar/en/20050204_bgateskeynote/manifest.xml&rate=1 ...somewhere past the 55 minute mark.
A question from Mark Moore (formerly of KPMG and an early SPS 2001 adopter)...
AUDIENCE QUESTION: A number of us have been on the collaboration path with Microsoft for a long time starting with Outlook and Exchange. A couple of us probably remember a team productivity update. Then SharePoint 2001, SharePoint 2003, Digital Dashboard was in there. In going from point- milestone to milestone on this path, there hasn't been a lot to leverage moving from one point to the other. Today, in the Whidbey talk I was gratified to hear that the Whidbey Web Parts were going to be backward compatible. I'm hoping that you can assure us that those of us who have been on the path with you for a while, that this cycle of creative destruction is coming to an end.
STEVE SINOFSKY: Well, that's our other one-on-one topic.
BILL GATES: Well, we're building on SharePoint. And-
AUDIENCE QUESTION: 2001 or 2003?
BILL GATES: 2003.
AUDIENCE QUESTION: Okay.
BILL GATES: And SharePoint 2003 has a very tight relationship with our ASP.NET and SQL Server. The main thing you're going to see in terms of evolution is the relationship between SharePoint and ASP become closer, and the relationship between SharePoint and SQL become closer. SharePoint today exposes some database capabilities. In the future, we want to expose virtually all the database capabilities in a very direct sense. Likewise, ASP.NET parts work in SharePoint, we want all parts to be ASP.NET parts. Bringing that layering so you don't even think of that as two layers. That's the general direction, while at the same time the workflow, document management, digital rights, and the breadth of the templates that we put in at the Office SharePoint level, those get to be quite a bit broader. I'd say of the cool new things that we're doing in Office, a very substantial percentage focus on where SharePoint either is the scenario or is a big part of the scenario.
AUDIENCE QUESTION: Can I follow up on the SQL point, because when those of us who saw the Web Store in SharePoint 2001, I sort of thought wow, that sounds a lot like what KIRO was going to be. Now, looking at WinFS, WinFS has sort of vague echoes of what the Web Store was going to be. Is SQL really the underlying storage that's going to be in the SharePoint of the future?
BILL GATES: Yes. What's happened is that there's this dream of unified storage, which is the world of files, mail, records, all these things, coming together in a very rich store. That's a dream that we've been investing in for a long, long time. What that basically is, it's about taking a very enhanced version of SQL that can deal with XML, it can deal with streams, and putting a very high-level data model, sort of a- you'd almost call it an entity-relationship data model on top of SQL so it can deal with all these things. That's the path we're going down. WinFS is merely the client implementation of that strategy. What SharePoint's going to sit on top of is the database engine and what WinFS, which is just a framework on top of this thing, is going to sit on top of is a database engine, those are one in the same thing. It's the next big iteration of SQL that gives us all of those powers. It's perfectly symmetric, client to server, WinFS to SharePoint. You'll think- you won't- it's not even clear the term WinFS and SharePoint are necessary, because what you're going to see is they're exactly the same thing. SharePoint just evolves up on the server. WinFS evolves down on the client.
STEVE SINOFSKY: Just to build on that, the- we put a lot of energy and a lot of effort to build the Web Part Framework that you saw in Windows SharePoint Services 2003. We pulled those- that structure into the base classes into the Whidbey product. Moving forward, you'll just expect us to build on that even more. We were kind of- we got started, we're aligned, and we're going to stay aligned for quite some. I can promise you that the next release of all these things we're working on are built on top of all of these same parts. The upgrade path is all designed to not even be an upgrade path. You could just keep running. You run it side-by-side. You could add the new features. It'll all be very, very smooth. Your investment in the Web Part side, in writing to the Web Service API for Windows SharePoint Services, both of those are very secure right now.
BILL GATES: Yes. Part of it we have a big installed base now.
STEVE SINOFSKY: Yes.
BILL GATES: With the older- some of those older things, we didn't get much of an installed base.
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