Partnership Adds Social Networking Capabilities to SharePoint
Earlier this week, I wrote about how Ingram Micro was
going
"all Facebook" with a set of social networking sites where solution
providers could connect with each other to partner on business opportunities
or on mergers and acquisitions.
Well, that's the opportunity for partners to do some online networking with
each other. Now Microsoft is moving to make social networking itself a business
opportunity for its partners.
Microsoft announced a partnership with wiki provider Atlassian Software Systems
and RSS specialist NewsGator on Wednesday at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco.
The basic idea is for the two firms to put together packages that make it easy
for companies to "expand social computing opportunities in the workplace."
The packages will work with Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, Microsoft's
runaway hit server product that did $800 million in business in fiscal 2007.
SharePoint is well on its way to joining Microsoft's club of billion-dollar-a-year
products (Windows clients, Office, Windows Server, Exchange Server and SQL Server).
NewsGator went GA on Wednesday with NewsGator Social Sites, a collection of
site templates, profiles, Web parts and middleware for SharePoint Server and
Windows SharePoint Services 3.0.
Atlassian is making immediately available plug-ins for exchanging information
between SharePoint and its Confluence wiki product for the enterprise.
Derek Burney, general manager of SharePoint at Microsoft, said in a statement,
"Microsoft's relationships with Atlassian and NewsGator represent dynamic
new opportunities for integrating social computing technology into a company's
business productivity infrastructure."
Do you see business value for your clients in social networking? Could you
make money from it? I'd like to hear your thoughts at [email protected].
Posted by Scott Bekker on October 18, 2007