Introducing SharePoint Writer

OK, so that product does not exist - not today, and perhaps not even tomorrow (in a SharePoint 2010 timeframe). But it should. Windows Live Writer is perhaps the best tool for offline composition and publishing of blog posts to a variety of back-end blogging services. As Microsoft begins its marketing campaign for SharePoint 2010, one of the key focus areas will be social computing. This should come as no surprise since it clearly is an area where Microsoft needs to demonstrate dramatic improvement to just keep up with the competition (e.g., Jive, IBM, Telligent and a host of best-of-breed vendors). Note: I'm not talking about Microsoft moving ahead in terms of functionality - just improving in a "good enough" way to leverage it's other strengths with decision-makers (e.g., common infrastructure, common development, common operations, etc.).

One area where Microsoft could show some level of innovation could be content authoring - which brings me back to Windows Live Writer (a tool I use extensively). You could argue that Word could be used as well - but the user experience of Live Writer is just a lot more effective - it does exactly what it is intended to do without carrying a lot of other baggage for a content experience that I'm not interested in (traditional office documents). Microsoft could simply re-brand the tool (e.g., Windows Live Writer for SharePoint) but I think a specific version with extensions that make it more appealing to SharePoint environments (e.g., security, compliance, role-based templates, integration with workflow, lists, etc.) could help alleviate some management concerns regarding employee blogging.

So another "thinking out loud" post ... but in general, internal product teams at Microsoft need to leverage innovative work being done by other teams (that might be considered consumer-centric).

For instance, what does a tool like Vine, a notification service that behaves in a Twitter-like fashion, have on Microsoft's OCS platform? Can Microsoft recast some of the underlying tooling to develop an enterprise version?

As Microsoft moves from on-premise to cloud/SaaS instantiations of its products - will market perceptions shift in terms of interoperability expectations between its consumer and enterprise products and services? I think they will (digital life trumps digital work so to speak - interoperability will be a default assumption by a next generation workforce).

Right now, given internal team structures and organizational boundaries - Microsoft is not prepared to leverages those opportunities (in my opinion). Which is why I'm doubtful the Windows Live and SharePoint teams could coordinate effectively to delivers a SharePoint Writer idea to market.

But they should...

Comments

[James Dellow]

I second this. Having recently moved to Mac, I can't tell you how much I miss WLW. I wonder if MS know what they are sitting on?

[Ryan Koopmans]

Not entirely on topic, but speaking of SaaS and writing tools...

Revizr is a new collaboration tool that takes a different approach, keeping the document owner in control. www.revizr.com

[Robin]

Could be an idea, but if it were to be integrated, it had better take a clearly visible place within SharePoint, not pushed back to the middle of obscurity. OTOH, I'm not sure I can see a clear enterprise value of integrating Writer. But that may be just me.