Microsoft To Offer Entry-Level CMS And Spark SPS, CMS Integration

The new Standard Edition of CMS 2002 will list for $6,999. That version will be limited for use on single-processor servers and must be used on a single server, said Trina Seinfeld, senior product manager of E-business Servers for Microsoft. The full CMS 2002 costs $42,000 per CPU, a price tag that put it beyond the pale for many partners and customers.

"A lot of customers were asking for a scaled-down version, a lower entry point," said Seinfeld. The standard edition also is limited to a maximum of 15 content contributors.

Attendees of the New Orleans event will also get beta software of the new Microsoft Content Management Server 2003 Connector For SharePoint Technologies, formerly and more succinctly known by its code name: Spark.

There had been an analogous connector for earlier releases of CMS and SharePoint Portal Server, but this iteration will add integration with the baseline SharePoint technologies embedded in Windows Server 2003 known as Windows SharePoint Services, Microsoft said. And it will be updated to integrate with the newly shipping Office SharePoint Portal Server 2003.

With this new release, integrators can publish CMS content from Windows SharePoint Services, while in the past, the integration pack let them share and publish documents from SharePoint Portal Server to CMS

Web masters can also view their items within SparePoint Portal server, view the workflow and approval process, Seinfeld said.

"SharePoint Portal Server always focused on having workers collaborate on documents and publish them to a SharePoint site, this integration now makes it that much easier to publish those documents to external-facing sites to CMS and Microsoft.com," she noted.

The final version is expected to be available by years end and will be free.

There has been much talk both inside and outside of Microsoft about where CMS and SharePoint Portal Server reside in the company. SPS is now in the same organization that handles Office and other "desktop" software while CMS is in the Windows server group, although that alignment may change.

Capabilities now found in CMS will end up in Microsoft's next-generation e-business server code-named Jupiter, now expected in 2005.

http://crn.channelsupersearch.com/news/crn/41687.asp">Jupiter

will also include Commerce Server and BizTalk EAI capabilities.

Insiders say it would make much sense for more portal capabilities to find their way into that Jupiter bundle as well. Seinfeld would not comment on internal organizational matters.