• Chart: Microsoft’s Document Collaboration Products

With the nearly simultaneous release of Microsoft SharePoint Team Services and SharePoint Portal Server added to the already-available Exchange 2000, Microsoft now has three products that offer substantially similar document-centric collaborative features. Certainly an organization could choose any one of these products as the basis for a collaboration solution, especially one built around Office-based business documents. But before choosing a product, organizations need to understand Microsoft’s overall collaboration strategy, and which collaborative products Microsoft is likely to support for the long term.

Microsoft’s Collaboration Strategy

The Webster definition of collaboration, "to work jointly with others or together especially in an intellectual endeavor," applies in some way to almost every Microsoft product. For example, in Office XP, Word, Excel, and PowerPoint have a "Send to…" feature that allows a document author to send the document to a mail recipient for review or to an Exchange public folder for posting. Project 2000, which is part of the Office family, has its own Web portal (Project Central) for collaborative project status reporting and task management. Exchange Conferencing Server and NetMeeting support audio and video conferencing, whiteboards, and application sharing. Programming tools allow developers to create custom workflow applications that enforce a process or business rules into a collaboration solution based on either Exchange or SQL Server. And now, the two new SharePoint products further extend Microsoft’s collaboration technologies.

Microsoft’s collaboration products can be divided into two distinct categories:

• Communications and coordination, including products such as Exchange, Outlook, MSN Messenger (instant messaging), Project, Exchange Conferencing Server, and NetMeeting.
• Content creation and management, such as the creation and management of documents, Web pages, and databases—and ensuring that the content is published and available to others. This category includes products such as Content Management Server 2001, Office XP, SharePoint Team Services, SharePoint Portal Server, Exchange (public folders), SQL Server, and Internet Information Server (IIS), Microsoft’s Web server.

Both of these broad collaboration categories can include "workflow" capabilities that route and track information while enforcing processes that manage the collaboration.

Each customer will approach collaboration differently, so Microsoft’s collaboration strategy is to allow each product group to provide a variety of tools, which Microsoft hopes will allow customers to build the collaboration solution they need. There is no centralized strategy or team responsible for coordinating the company’s efforts. Customers are left trying to determine which products will best meet their needs, especially taking into account their long-term futures.

Despite the apparent overlap of products in the communication and coordination category, the strategy for communication-based products within Microsoft clearly revolves around Exchange. Microsoft has spent many years developing Exchange to the point that it works with the Active Directory in Windows for security services, supports distribution groups, and recognizes extensible user attributes. It also has tight integration with Office and the Outlook client. Exchange has powerful features for e-mail, calendaring, conferencing, instant messaging, message storage, replication, and communication with foreign e-mail and messaging systems. Exchange’s event model and support for collaboration data objects (CDO) enable developers to build complex workflow solutions that go beyond simple document routing.

The strategy for content creation and management is less clear, no one product group or product is driving content-management collaboration. For example, the two products using the SharePoint name use different architectures and storage engines. Deciding which product is using the better storage engine is further confused because Microsoft is reexamining the storage architecture of both SQL Server and Exchange. (See "Microsoft Rethinks Exchange Storage Architecture" on page 3 in the May 2001 Update.)

By understanding the strengths, costs, and Microsoft’s commitment to SharePoint Team Services, SharePoint Portal Server, and Exchange, organizations can ensure that they use the product that meets their current and future requirements.

SharePoint Team Services

SharePoint Team Services is a team-oriented solution for easily and inexpensively creating a departmental or team intranet site. These sites can provide what Microsoft calls "ad-hoc information sharing," allowing groups or teams to easily and quickly create and maintain Web-based document libraries, track and save comments on those documents, receive alerts when documents are changed, host discussions, post announcements, and conduct surveys.

Team Services Strengths

SharePoint Team Services’ strength is creating a centralized intranet site for publishing documents and information related to a single project. For example, a multidisciplinary group working on a project such as a new advertising campaign could be composed of members from various departments in an organization, including marketing, public relations, legal, the product area, and customer support.

The team can use SharePoint Team Services to publish draft documents, including press releases, ads, collateral literature, and product packaging designs. In addition, they can use the list feature of SharePoint Team Services to publish contact information for team members and any other relevant information that can be managed as a list, such as the project schedule or a bill of materials for the campaign collateral.

Both team members and members of the organization at large could discuss the documents and use the information contained in the lists. They could use the survey feature to "vote" on draft slogans, positioning statements, and packaging proposals.

With SharePoint Team Services, users can even "subscribe" to a document. They will be notified when a change has been made to the document, allowing them to keep up with the latest revisions.

Team Services Requirements and Customization

SharePoint Team Services ships with retail versions of Office XP Professional Special Edition, Office XP Developer Edition, and FrontPage 2002. (It may also be bundled with Windows .NET server, which is currently in beta, so the final feature set is subject to change.) For volume licensing customers, SharePoint Team Services ships with Office XP Developer, Office XP Professional with FrontPage 2002, and FrontPage 2002.

Previous versions of Office Developer Edition included both the Office Server Extensions and the FrontPage Server Extensions that allowed Office developers to build solutions similar to those in SharePoint Team Services, but few organizations seemed to know of their existence and many were confused as to how to use these separate pieces. SharePoint Team Services builds on these extensions so that a basic, useful intranet site can be up and running quickly.

SharePoint Team Services requires IIS for the intranet site, but it does not require Active Directory. A run-time version of SQL Server, the Microsoft Date Engine (MSDE), is included with SharePoint Team Services.

Once the site is up and running, FrontPage can be used to add a theme or customize the look of a SharePoint Team Services site. Because Microsoft made SharePoint Team Services easy to install and easy to customize using FrontPage 2002, plus the fact that users do not need a Client Access License (CAL) or additional software other than a Web browser to access it, SharePoint Team Services-based sites could quickly proliferate in an organization.

For more information on SharePoint Team Services, see "FrontPage 10 Announced" on page 16 of the Jan. 2001 Update and "Office XP Offers Collaboration, Discoverability" on page 16 of the June 2001 Update.

Microsoft’s Commitment to Team Services

Microsoft’s commitment to SharePoint Team Services has not been demonstrated. On one hand, there is competition in this space from products such as Ray Ozzie’s Groove, which even Bill Gates has demonstrated as a "cool" application.

Microsoft and the Office team have backed away from other team-based products, notably Team Manager, which was a workgroup software product designed to keep teams in sync by consolidating, coordinating, and tracking team activities. Likewise, the future of Project Central, which allows team members to update project information and to see project status from a Web site, is not clear. If the Office family were really coordinated, one would expect to be able to easily combine information from Project into a SharePoint Team Services-based site, negating the need for a separate Project Central. No integration of SharePoint Team Services and Project Central has been announced, and Project Central could, like Team Manager, become an obsolete part of the Office family.

SharePoint Team Services could be very popular with customers, but less popular within Microsoft because it only generates sales of additional copies of FrontPage and Office XP, rather than income from CALs.

Another wild card is the rumored Web-based Office-like product code-named NetDocs, which has collaboration as one of its primary goals.

As a result of these uncertainties, Team Services could be just another interim team product from Office, rather than a long-term platform for collaboration.

SharePoint Portal Server

SharePoint Portal Server is a new information-sharing product within the .NET Enterprise Server family that provides an intranet portal built around Microsoft’s most powerful search and document management technologies.

Portal Server’s Strengths

SharePoint Portal Server’s main role is as an organization-wide intranet portal that centralizes access to information within an organization. For example, many organizations have documents and information stored in Web sites, SharePoint Team Services-based sites, file shares on file servers, Exchange public folders, and even Lotus Notes data stores. SharePoint Portal Server could search those data sources for documents or data most relevant to a user’s needs, making it easier for users to find the information they are looking for.

In addition, the base document management features of SharePoint Portal Server would allow an organization to create a document library with check-in and check-out control, versioning, tracking, and approval routing so that documents can be created, managed, approved, and published efficiently. For more information on the features of SharePoint Portal Server, see "Tahoe Brings Document Management to the Masses" on page 3 of the Dec. 2000 Update and "SharePoint Portal Server Ships" on page 7 of the June 2001 Update.

Portal Server Requirements and Customization

SharePoint Portal Server is a member of the .NET Enterprise Server family. It requires Windows 2000 Server’s IIS for the Web site and uses an adapted and customized version of the Web Storage System that first shipped in Microsoft Exchange 2000 (although it requires neither Active Directory nor Exchange).

SharePoint Portal Server requires a CAL for each user who accesses it. Technically, SharePoint Portal Server could be used for either an Internet or intranet portal, but its per-client licensing essentially limits its role to intranets.

Developers can customize SharePoint Portal Server’s Web interface using Digital Dashboard Web Parts, reusable XML-based modules that provide a Web-based user interface to various functions or data. SharePoint Portal Server can be extended with an SDK, and developers can also extend it via Web Storage System programming interfaces, including OLEDB, Active Data Objects (ADO) and Publishing and Knowledge Management Collaboration Data Objects (PKMCDO).

Finally, SharePoint Portal Server provides Microsoft’s best Web site indexing engine, which can incorporate information content scattered across the Internet into a collaboration solution or portal.

Microsoft’s Commitment to Portal Server

As with SharePoint Team Services, Microsoft’s level of commitment to SharePoint Portal Server is not cut and dried. The portal server software category is becoming a competitive enterprise arena, with products from, among others, IBM (Web Sphere and Lotus), Oracle, Plumtree, and Sun.

A troubling aspect of SharePoint Portal Server is that customers must buy a separate product and accompanying CALs to access the best search and index engine Microsoft has to offer. Customers might expect that this service developed by Microsoft Research should be made a part of Windows .NET Server, supporting Microsoft’s long-held position that key technology should find its way into the operating system.

Although SharePoint Portal Server uses a different database (the Web Storage System) than SharePoint Team Services (SQL Server), it too will have to migrate to Microsoft’s new SQL Server storage technology, code-named Yukon, in the future.

A key issue with both SharePoint Team Services and SharePoint Portal Server is backup and restore limitations—it is extremely difficult to restore a single document or folder. Until this issue gets resolved, many organizations will not use either product to store critical documents.

Given that portal server software is becoming a key enterprise application category, and Microsoft will derive direct revenues from both the server and CALs, SharePoint Portal Server will likely be supported for the foreseeable future.

Exchange 2000

Exchange 2000 is the messaging and collaboration server in the .NET Enterprise Server family. A familiar messaging product, its support for public folders and document-centric collaboration is less well known.

Exchange 2000 Strength

Exchange 2000 has a comprehensive set of collaboration features, including its traditional e-mail and scheduling services, a workflow engine, event trapping, and CDO. While SharePoint Team Services may provide the easiest solution, and SharePoint Portal Server is especially adept at document management and indexing, Exchange is the most powerful collaboration platform, although it requires developers to fully unlock its power.

For example, Microsoft partner CaseShare’s csPortal uses Exchange 2000 and a Web repository to store pleadings, correspondence, work product, deadlines, tasks, contacts, and other information lawyers need to manage a complex case.

Exchange provides public folders for sharing, organizing, and managing collaborative documents. Public folders can be configured as bulletin boards, discussion forums, shared calendars, and customer tracking systems. For example, one public folder could be created to hold status information about a project, and another folder could store commonly asked questions about the project.

Users see public folders in Microsoft Outlook or via Internet Explorer and Outlook Web Access. Access to information in folders is based on Windows 2000 security, and can be managed on a granular basis to control who can read, change, or delete the information. Even anonymous users can be given the right to access public folders without having an Exchange mailbox or Active Directory ID.

One of the major advantages of public folders is that a public folder can be replicated on multiple public folder servers. Replicas are useful for distributing user load on servers, for distributing public folders across geographically separate sites, and even for backing up public folder data. However, replication also increases the chances of collisions, where two or more replicas are simultaneously changed; Exchange has no built-in mechanisms to resolve the collisions or to restrict edits to a master copy. For this reason, most documents posted to public folders are generally read-only.

Exchange 2000 Requirements and Customization

Exchange 2000 requires Windows 2000 Server and Active Directory. The workflow designer for Exchange 2000 provides a visual design tool to facilitate the creation of forms and process flow for a workflow application. As with SharePoint Portal Server, developers can use ADO and CDO to build custom solutions utilizing the Web Storage System. For more information on Exchange as a development platform, see "Web Store Overhauls Exchange Development Platform" on page 13 of the May 2001 Update.

Microsoft’s Commitment to Exchange

Given the role of Exchange as the key Microsoft messaging product, Exchange Server will continue to be supported for some time. Moving from the current Web Storage System to Yukon-based storage will likely increase the development tools that are available in the future. Another sign of Microsoft’s commitment to Exchange is the Microsoft Exchange Conference (MEC), a large annual conference that provides developers with the information they need to build collaborative solutions on Exchange.

What to Do?

No single product from Microsoft has all the features needed to build a complete solution that covers the gamut of communications, collaboration, workflow, and content management requirements. Exchange offers the best overall set of features, but requires custom development of collaboration solutions. SharePoint Portal Server offers the best document management and indexing. SharePoint Team Services may be the easiest to install and initially configure. For additional comparisons, see the table "Microsoft’s Document Collaboration Products.

To build the most powerful solution, organizations will need both Exchange 2000—for its messaging, scheduling, conferencing, and workflow infrastructure—and SharePoint Portal Server, for strong search and indexing features and document management.

Finally, features alone do not guarantee a successful collaborative solution. Organizations will need an overall plan and should not underestimate the cultural conflicts that new collaboration solutions can introduce—users may not always be willing to give up control over the information they have.