Microsoft To Make iWaves At TechEd

But news out of Dallas will not center so much on what's shipping, but on what will ship "soon:" Office 2003, scheduled for release in June, has been delayed until late summer, about the same time frame as the new SharePoint Portal Server 2.0. As for Exchange Server 2003, aka Titanium, the company shipped Release Candidate 1 two weeks ago but plans to formally unveil RC1 at the show, sources said. When Beta 2 debuted in January, Microsoft said it expected to ship the product midyear.

Visio 2003 is slated for beta in June, but several solution providers said the new SharePoint, officially dubbed Office SharePoint Portal Server 2.0, will be the key draw. This offering can act as a "hub" for other Office applications,a place where users can aggregate and categorize relevant information. Keynoter

Paul Flessner, Microsoft's senior vice president of the server platform division, is expected to demonstrate SharePoint and other iWave products at the show.

"They're going to try to shift the focus to SharePoint as the collaboration platform," said one solution provider. "Two years ago, it was Exchange."

The current SharePoint Portal Server release has won good reviews from partners, who are setting up portals both for themselves and for customers. One weak spot, however, is that it has difficulty working well through firewalls. Ironically, for a Microsoft product, it is too centralized, these partners said.

"Its architecture is not distributed enough. ... It's hard to get it to work for a company with headquarters in New York and offices around the world," one solution provider said.

As evidenced by SharePoint's name change, Microsoft is trying to extend the powerful Office brand beyond the current Office applications to Visio, Project and other offerings within the Information Worker Productivity group.