Microsoft Makes Headway On Knowledge Management Platform

The company plans to ship its intranet portal, document management, search and Web publishing server, code-named Tahoe, into beta testing after the first of the new year and likely will ship product in the second half of 2000, said Gytis Barzdukas, lead product manager of Exchange 2000 Server.

"It has shared technology with Platinum [Exchange 2000], including the Web store, but there will be no beta until after the first of the year. We're still evaluating packaging. Customers are saying they won't deploy Tahoe on the same machines as their messaging server, so we're trying to figure out the best way to package and we still don't know."

Last January, officials said they expected the server to be released into beta in July and ship 90-plus days after Platinum, which is now known as Exchange 2000.

Tahoe, the successor to Site Server, is expected to offer enterprise document management and searching capabilities, library services such as check-in and check-out, template Web publishing and intranet portal services for searching and browsing content, according to Microsoft's early blueprint last January.

Barzdukas also said the company is on track to deliver an update of Office 2000 Developer Edition "within the next couple months" that incorporate the company's new Grizzly workflow hooks that exploit SQL Server. In addition, an update of Office 2000 Developer with Grizzly hooks that exploit Exchange 2000 is also due shortly after Exchange 2000 ships during the first half of next year, Barzdukas said, noting that the messaging/groupware server likely will ship shortly after the release of Windows 2000.

"Right now, we're 10 days behind them," said Barzdukas, referring to the lag between Windows 2000 RC2 beta code and Exchange 2000 Beta 3 code. "We're pretty confident we'll hit the time frame in the first half of next year, but we have a very solid beta. I'm not going to say we're not going to be 90 to 120 days behind Windows 2000."

While the company has yet to determine the final packaging scheme for its Polar TeamSpace services, the initial portions of it already have trickled into the marketplace.

The company recently released an add-on for BackOffice 4.5 called Team Productivity Update that incorporates the TeamSpace user interface and tools originally planned for the Polar server, conceived and originally targeted to be productized as an integrated team server for Office 2000. The Polar server, which was targeted to provide workflow, tracking, a structured team workspace and cross-store (SQL and Exchange) integration, interoperability and replication, also is under review, he said. "Polar is a code name for an effort we have but it's broader than one update," said Barzdukas. "It could be integrated with BackOffice. That's an avenue we're pursuing as a possibility."

Microsoft plans a major upgrade of BackOffice, likely to be dubbed BackOffice 2000, in the first half of 2000. Tahoe and Polar have been targeted to be included as servers and/or services to the server suite, according to an earlier report published by CRN.

One Exchange 2000 and Windows 2000 beta tester said Microsoft may have gotten off to a rocky start in its knowledge management platform, but he likes that the company is responding to customer's feedback--and he is too busy to notice. "Clearly, Microsoft is responding to market demands for services currently available in Notes. But they're segmenting their products, saying if you don't want Exchange but document management, you can go with this," said Greg Scott, IS manager at Oregon State University in Corvallis. "It's a slice-and-dice approach. KM [knowledge management] is quietly being slipstreamed into their products today."