Web 2.0 - Microsoft's Approach

Microsoft Japan took a quiet approach at Web 2.0 conference. Despite the fact that they were a platinum sponsor, they did not have any speaking slots but rather choose to take a hospitality booth to treat their customers to some coffee and light refreshments. The appearance of a few pretty faces to invite participants did wonders to attract the crowd. At one point, it was packed to the brim. They wore a cute white Microsoft dress, complete with logo down the lenght of their tight skirts. Kudos to the event organizers who selected the sweetest smile available to help put one on ours.

Microsoft was showing their bells and whistles: Silverlight and Web Expression. However, noticeably missing was the center piece of their Web 2.0 showcase: Sharepoint 2007. It was an odd move considering that Sharepoint is the fastest selling portal in the world. According to Tom Rizzo (TechEd USA), some 85 million licenses have been sold. When you add to those that uses the free Windows Sharepoint Services (WSS) bundled with Windows Server 2003, there could be more than 400 million users worldwide. It would not be a surprise that Sharepoint is THE Enterprise Web 2.0 platform of choice. It already comes with blogging, wikis, and RSS. With AJAX components from third party vendors such as Webparts360, mashs-ups and AJAX components truly add life to this ubiquotuos platform that is already so prevalent at most corporates. So before you start a new Web 2.0 project in your company, you might just want to turn on the tap and see what Microsoft already have been serving you on your server ;)