Microsoft SharePoint embraces Web 2.0

24 Jun 2007 19:52

Software giant has launched an add-on to SharePoint server enabling businesses to make use of wikis and blogs

Microsoft has launched a Web 2.0 add-on for SharePoint Server that enables businesses to make use of popular collaboration features such as wikis and blogs.

The software giant's general manager of SharePoint tools and platforms, Derek Burney, announced Community Kit for SharePoint at last week's Enterprise 2.0 conference in the US.

Enterprise RSS vendor NewsGator said it has enhanced SharePoint's feed subscribing tools with tagging and an Ajax interface.

The notion of integrating Web 2.0 technologies from the public internet — blogs, wikis, and social-networking features — in businesses has been gaining momentum for the past few years and is sometimes referred to as "Enterprise 2.0".

Several smaller software companies, like Socialtext and Jive Software, have created products designed to be lightweight, user-friendly alternatives to traditional content-management and collaboration tools.

Large software vendors have also boarded the Web 2.0 bandwagon. IBM is releasing within a month a series of tools, such as Lotus Connect, which provides blogs and bookmarking tools for business users.

Microsoft's Burney said on Tuesday that Microsoft already has support for blogs and wikis built into the SharePoint portal server. It also has a tool called "My Site" that allows business workers to create an individual profile page with details on themselves and their work projects.

The Community Kit for SharePoint is meant to enhance what's already in there, according to Microsoft's SharePoint blog. It includes templates for enhancing a blog's look, better wiki tools, and a tag cloud feature.

The product was spearheaded and built by a group of about 20 volunteers and released on Microsoft's code-sharing site, CodePlex.

Burney said that Web 2.0 technologies shine in exactly this sort of task, where organisations can use the internet to solicit opinions and feedback from customers to improve product development. "It's great because the product can grow outside of its release cycle," he said.

Microsoft hosts several mashup meetings a month where representatives from different product groups get together to compare notes. These meetings have led to hundreds of good ideas, five product prototypes and even a patent application, Burney said.

Story URL: http://news.zdnet.co.uk/software/0,1000000121,39287691,00.htm