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Posts Tagged ‘Microsoft’

#alfresco says #SharePoint “is simultaneously the most interesting and dangerous Microsoft technology”
Transcript From Episode CMSW2009-08-17

While Microsoft’s Windows sales fell for the first time in history this year, its SharePoint sales have gone up, after breaking the $1 billion revenue mark last year. A quote from Matt Asay, an executive at Alfresco who we met at CMS Expo Chicago: “SharePoint is saving Microsoft’s Office business even as it paves the way for a new era of Microsoft lock-in. It is simultaneously the most interesting and dangerous Microsoft technology, and has largely caught its competitors napping.”

Steve Ballmer, Microsoft’s chief executive, has talked about SharePoint as the company’s next big operating system. Currently it is used to create web sites and manage the content, it is used for project and document collaboration by team members, and it includes business intelligence tools too, at a price point that rivals what some niche companies charge for just one piece of the package. While it lacks sophisticated features offered in the point tools, Microsoft is confident that it has the necessary features for most users.

That said, a new release planned for next year promises to be “packed full of more advanced features”, such as tying into the corporate search technology acquired by the purchase of Fast Search and Transfer. Even free open source solutions have a hard time competing when Microsoft offers free basic SharePoint licenses to Windows Server customers.

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