The Future of Microsoft Collaboration
Microsoft's collaboration strategy might be a work in progress, but it shows significant promise for the future.
by Peter O'Kelly

Posted October 16, 2003

If you've tracked Microsoft's collaboration technologies over the past several years, its strategy might seem less than complete or even inconsistent. Exchange 2000 included conferencing and instant messaging capabilities and seemed to set the server up as the collaboration tool. However, today, Exchange 2003 has returned to its roots as a messaging platform and new products are in development that provide expanding conferencing and IM services. That might leave you wondering how SharePoint fits into the picture. The strategy might appear to be in disarray, but a closer look will reveal a compelling plan emerging from the chaos.

Currently, a great deal of the IT industry (customers, press, and analysts) is uncertain about Microsoft's collaboration strategy. This is due in part to the dynamic nature of the collaboration software market segment, as well as the sweeping changes Microsoft has made to its collaboration-related products over the last few years. In this article, I'll provide an overview of the recent changes, and will make recommendations for IT decision-makers focused on collaborative applications and infrastructure.

To establish context for Microsoft's collaboration strategy, it's important to understand some of the broader collaboration market dynamics. Historically, the software market segments for communication and collaboration software have been a bit unorganized: Definitions and terminology for product categories are inconsistent, and category descriptions used over the years include groupware (which, in turn, was defined in terms of communication, collaboration, and coordination), teamware, workflow, contextual collaboration, knowledge management, and collaborative portals. Your organization probably has an extensive (and expensive) collection of products that fall into one or more of these categories, and you likely haven't had a particularly pleasant time trying to integrate content and applications across the products.

From Confusion to Collaboration
As Ray Ozzie and I explained in our recent perspective, "Communication, Collaboration & Technology: Back to the Future," the industry is now converging rapidly around a new collaboration model that has great potential to make collaboration more useful and much simpler (see Resources). The new model is centered on four key elements: workspaces, channels, contextual collaboration, and industry standards.

Workspaces are virtual spaces where people assemble to work jointly on projects, processes, and documents. Example of workspace-oriented products include many common types of Notes/Domino applications, IBM Lotus Team Workplace (formerly known as QuickPlace), the Windows SharePoint Services-hosted document and meeting workspaces in Office 2003, and the Groove Networks Groove Workspace model (often used in conjunction with SharePoint).

Channels complement workspaces. They're appropriate for subscription and notification-oriented collaborative contexts. E-mail, weblogs, and RSS (known as Rich Site Summary, RDF Site Summary, and Really Simple Syndication, RSS is an XML format for headline syndication) feeds are all channel examples. Channels often foster collaboration by providing a means of notifying people when something noteworthy has transpired in a collaborative context, such as when a process milestone has been achieved.

Contextual collaboration describes a trend toward the pervasive integration of collaboration-oriented tools and services. It enables people to focus on their business tasks at hand more readily, and they're disrupted less often by tool boundaries. Examples include IBM Lotus Instant Messaging and Web Conferencing (formerly known as Sametime) and Microsoft Office Live Meeting communication services; both are used to add presence awareness and realtime communication tools in collaborative workspaces and other application contexts.

Finally, a broad compliance with industry standards, such as XML Web services and Session Initiation Protocol (SIP), facilitates converging to a new collaboration model and simplifies interoperability greatly.

Collaborative applications and tools used to be the exception rather than the norm given their complexity, cost, and other constraints (see the sidebar, "A 20-Year Perspective on Collaboration"). However, collaboration is now starting to permeate all application contexts, and completely automated applications (requiring no human intervention) now have a category of their own: "straight-through processing." This suggests collaborative applications are increasingly the norm rather than the exception. As I mentioned earlier, collaboration software-related terminology is still often inconsistent and/or ill-defined, in part because many software vendors are scrambling to adapt their previous-generation products to the emerging model, but a clear overall convergence trend is underway.

Microsoft is both influencing and influenced by the convergence toward the new collaborative application model. Other leading vendors are similarly impacted; two examples are IBM's new Workplace strategy subsuming its earlier Lotus collaboration products, and Oracle's expansion of its collaboration-related product family.

See the Strategy Unfold
To understand Microsoft's new collaboration strategy, it's useful to start by briefly reviewing its pre-2003 strategy. Prior to 2003, Microsoft had something of a kitchen sink of collaboration-related products. It was an early realtime collaboration pioneer with NetMeeting (introduced in 1996 for realtime text, audio, and video communication, along with application sharing), for example, and also included some powerful Internet-based tools for document-oriented collaboration in Office 2000. Yet overall, Microsoft wasn't considered a leader in collaboration software.

Exchange Server 2000 was intended to vault Microsoft into a collaboration leadership role as it added instant messaging, conferencing, and support for a range of document-centric collaborative applications to Exchange's traditional enterprise messaging and calendaring/scheduling features. However, Exchange 2000 was ultimately unsuccessful as a collaborative application platform. This was due in part to upgrade complexity, caused by Active Directory (AD) and Group Policy prerequisites in Windows 2000. To date, Exchange 5.5 migrations to Exchange 2000 have been limited to an estimated 50 percent to 60 percent of the Exchange 5.5 installed base. (This is one reason why Microsoft recently extended support for Exchange 5.5—which it had scheduled to be terminated—for another year and at no additional cost). In hindsight, Exchange 2000 was also an example of unfortunate timing; its instant messaging and conferencing features barely predated related industry standards.

SharePoint also played an early role in Microsoft's collaboration-related product portfolio. Its roots trace back to FrontPage and Office Server Extensions, but the SharePoint products (SharePoint Team Services and SharePoint Portal) were built on different architectures, had scalability constraints, and were positioned in a confusing manner.

The fact that these offerings weren't built on the .NET Framework added another awkward dimension to Microsoft's pre-2003 collaboration strategy. Considering all of Microsoft's historical, collaboration-related challenges, it's not surprising that many people in the press/analyst community considered the phrase "Microsoft collaboration strategy" a contradiction in terms.

Put Collaboration Today in Context
Despite its history, Microsoft's collaboration-related products for 2003 and beyond are a radically different story, and the company is poised to become a leader with the new workplace/channel/contextual collaboration model. The major changes in Microsoft's collaboration-related product strategy include a redefined role for Exchange, as well as a new .NET-based architecture and an expanded role for SharePoint. Office will also play a larger role in Microsoft's collaboration strategy with contextual collaboration in Office 2003 and Office Live for realtime collaboration. In addition, collaboration-related partnerships with companies such as Groove Networks and CASAHL add another dimension to collaboration possibilities.

Exchange 2003 doesn't provide the instant messaging, conferencing, and collaborative application features included in Exchange 2000; other Microsoft products and services have replaced them, as I'll explain later. Exchange 2003 is instead focused more narrowly on enterprise messaging and calendaring/scheduling (channel-oriented types of communication). Also, advances in Windows Server 2003 alleviate many of the earlier Exchange upgrade and maintenance challenges. Of course, this presents some application migration challenges for organizations that built collaborative applications in earlier releases of Exchange—another topic I'll discuss later in this article.

The SharePoint product family is now composed of Windows SharePoint Services, built into and available exclusively on Windows Server 2003, and Office SharePoint Portal Server 2003. SharePoint was completely re-architected for 2003, building on SQL Server, the .NET Framework (with a new Web Part model that extends ASP.NET forms), and BizTalk Server (for XML document workflow and enterprise application integration) (see Figure 1). SharePoint has essentially assumed the role of the earlier Exchange-based collaborative document storage system, and it's now the central focus for Microsoft's collaborative workspace features.

Use Office 2003 for Contextual Collaboration
Windows SharePoint Services also serves as the service layer for important new workspace-based collaboration features in Office 2003, which includes two types of collaborative workspaces. The first, Document Workspaces, are presented in a new Shared Workspace task pane in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Visio. They're used to facilitate document-oriented collaboration (see Figure 2).

As Figure 2 suggests, Document Workspaces enable users to check the online presence of other workspace members easily, as well as initiate communication and collaboration sessions (text, audio, and video communication, along with application sharing, using Windows Messenger) with available workspace members (contacts). Users can also track tasks, documents, and links associated with the workspace and the status of individual documents (to determine who has checked out a given document, for example).

Meeting Workspaces, the second type of Office collaborative workspace, are used in Outlook 2003 to collaborate on planning and managing meetings. They're similar to Document Workspaces but are associated with specific meetings, and they provide an alternative to e-mail for distributing and managing meeting-related documents and tasks. You can access both Document and Meeting Workspaces through the Office 2003 Shared Workspace task pane and Internet Explorer-based SharePoint clients. You can also use the browser-based SharePoint client to customize workspaces.

Office 2003 also incorporates several realtime communication- and collaboration-related features, including the Members tab in Document and Meeting Workspaces. Realtime features are also available in other Office contexts, such as the capability to determine if an e-mail message sender is currently available. Also, Office application developers working with Smart Tag technology can use the realtime features in their applications.

Outlook 2003 has a role for both workspace- and channel-oriented collaborative contexts. You can use it with Meeting Workspaces, as I mentioned previously, and it also offers a consistent user experience for a variety of channel types. Of course, e-mail is the channel type all Outlook users are familiar with, and Outlook 2003 can also be used as an RSS feed client with third-party offerings such as NewsGator (see Resources). Microsoft has also started to use Outlook for other collaborative application contexts such as Microsoft Business Solutions CRM (Customer Relationship Management), which offers an Outlook client the option to provide off-line application support and salespeople an integrated user experience.

Overall, contextual collaboration is a consistent theme throughout Office 2003. Its users don't need to leave their preferred tools or application contexts to collaborate with others, and they can also collaborate with a variety of workspace- and channel-oriented tools. These capabilities can provide significant business value by reducing coordination costs.

Microsoft's new product line-up for realtime communication and collaboration includes several new products. Office Live Meeting 2003 is a hosted, Web-based conferencing service based on PlaceWare, a product Microsoft acquired in early 2003. Office Live Communications Server 2003 (previously known as Real-Time Communication Server) is an enterprise server for SIP-based point-to-point communication. Windows Messenger is a client for instant messaging, audio and video communication, and application sharing that works with SIP, Exchange Instant Messaging, and .NET Messenger protocols.

Microsoft still supports NetMeeting and the Exchange 2000 realtime communication services. However, because they're offerings that predate standards such as SIP, they're no longer central to Microsoft's realtime communication/collaboration strategy.

Microsoft Collaborates With Partners
Although Microsoft's collaboration strategy focuses primarily on enterprises using its 2003 wave of products, the company also works with collaboration-related partners that address customer requirements that Microsoft doesn't address directly with its own products. Groove Networks and CASAHL Technology are two leading examples (see Resources).

Groove Networks extends Microsoft's collaboration capabilities with broader support for on- and off-line collaborative applications and provides a powerful but easy-to-use communication, identity, and trust architecture that's uniquely well suited for inter-organization collaboration. From a user's perspective, Groove is integrated seamlessly into Office and Windows Messenger; for example, users can create Groove workspaces to augment an Outlook message context and can launch Groove from within Windows Messenger.

CASAHL is Microsoft's recommended solution provider for enterprises seeking to migrate collaborative applications from IBM Lotus Notes/Domino to the Microsoft platform. ecKnowledge, CASAHL's flagship product, is a collaborative application switch that facilitates bidirectional data and application integration among Notes/Domino and Outlook/Exchange, SQL Server, SharePoint, InfoPath, BizTalk, and Visual Studio .NET. CASAHL's any-to-any approach for integrating and migrating collaborative clients, servers, and tools also makes ecKnowledge useful for organizations moving among Microsoft products. For example, you can use ecKnowledge to migrate an Outlook/Exchange-based collaborative workflow application to InfoPath, SharePoint, and SQL Server.

Several other third-party software vendors also complement Microsoft products for collaborative applications. For example, Macromedia Breeze Live is an attractive option for organizations that want to collaborate on PowerPoint presentations, conduct interactive meetings (including audio and video), and share applications by using the Flash Player on Windows, Mac, and Linux client platforms. Workflow and business process automation is another collaboration area where third-party vendors complement Microsoft's clients, platforms, and tools; vendors such as Source Code and Ultimus have adapted their products to .NET and InfoPath.

IBM Lotus Notes/Domino is also a widely deployed complement to Microsoft technologies for collaborative applications, although it is in many respects directly competitive with Outlook, Exchange, SharePoint, and InfoPath. Notes/Domino offers strong Office integration and fully exploits the Windows platform. It's reasonable to expect that IBM will also embrace and extend Microsoft's standards-based, realtime collaboration services in future releases of its Notes/Domino and Workplace product lines.

Address Limitations and Challenges
Microsoft's collaboration strategy and product line are both still works in progress in several respects, and also entail some challenges for organizations. You'll want to be sure to keep these issues in mind as you plan your company's collaboration strategy.

First, in order to use all the collaborative capabilities described in this article, you'll need to deploy Office 2003 and Windows Server 2003. Document and Meeting Workspaces aren't available in earlier versions of Office, and Windows SharePoint Services is available exclusively on Windows Server 2003. Microsoft also hasn't indicated if or when the new Shared Workspace features will be available in Office for the Mac OS.

Second, Microsoft's collaborative application products lack a comprehensive and consistent application meta-model, and also entail the use of multiple developer tools. Depending on the application requirements, developers might need to use InfoPath, Office developer tools (VBA), Visual Studio .NET, browser-based SharePoint tools, and FrontPage. In contrast, IBM Lotus Notes/Domino has a unified and deep collaborative application meta-model and integrated developer tools.

Third, you'll encounter challenges working across firewalls and Network Address Translation (NAT) devices, as well as when working with disparate identity/authentication/access control models. These are all areas where Groove can complement Microsoft's products.

Fourth, you'll experience temporary functional downgrades: For example, Office Live Communication Server 2003 is a point-to-point service exclusively, while Exchange 2000 Conferencing was a multiparty service. The hosted Microsoft Office Live Meeting service already supports multiparty conferencing (for up to 2,500 participants), and Microsoft will support enterprise-managed multi-party conferencing eventually as well. But, for the moment, organizations using Exchange 2000 Conferencing for multiparty conferencing don't have an upgrade or migration path.

Fifth, organizations using non-Microsoft platforms and applications won't receive comprehensive collaboration support from Microsoft directly, although third-party vendors such as CASAHL and Groove can accommodate non-Microsoft products.

Finally, Microsoft's weblog (blog) strategy is yet to be defined. Blogs are useful for channel-oriented communication and collaboration, but to date, Microsoft has deferred implicitly to third-party software vendors such as NewsGator.

Look to the Future
In the future, you can expect to see many extensions and refinements as Microsoft moves into its post-2003 product cycle with several new product releases. Longhorn, the next major version of the Windows client, and some corresponding Windows Server updates are expected to bring many communication and collaboration features—such as contact management, presence awareness, and realtime communication tools—directly into the Windows client platform. Office 12, the codename for the next major release of Office 2003, is expected to be tightly integrated with Longhorn.

Yukon, the next major release of SQL Server, will serve eventually as the storage subsystem for several upcoming Microsoft releases. These include Kodiak, the next major release of Exchange Server; Jupiter, which will unify BizTalk Server, Content Management Server, and Commerce Server; and the next major release of SharePoint. Yukon will also be part of the yet-to-be-introduced, but widely anticipated, enterprise-oriented version of the Office Live Meeting (PlaceWare) collaboration platform, which will address current Office Live Communication Server limitations for multiparty conferencing.

Future versions of Visual Studio .NET will provide a more comprehensive and integrated set of developer tools for collaborative applications, especially as Longhorn and Jupiter V2 (the release following BizTalk Server 2004) are released. For planning purposes, it's important to note that this represents a two- to three-year product plan, so it will likely be 2006 before all of the products are released.

In the meantime (between now and 2006), if your organization seeks to exploit Microsoft's collaboration strategy fully, you can take a variety of actions to prepare. Start by embracing the emerging workspace/channel/contextual collaboration model. Assess the types of workspaces, channels, and tools that are most appropriate for the way people work and collaborate within your organization. Also plan to migrate collaborative applications from earlier software products that aren't consistent with the emerging model.

You should also focus on standards, especially XML, Web services, and realtime standards including SIP and SIP for Instant Messaging and Presence Leveraging Extensions (SIMPLE). These standards will simplify integration and interoperability greatly.

Also consider revisiting nontechnical dimensions, such as incentive systems and rules of etiquette, to ensure your organization is collaboration friendly. Even the best collaboration-oriented tools will be ineffective if your organization's culture isn't supportive.

Of course, you'll need to calculate your costs and potential return on investment with a move to Microsoft's 2003 product line. Be sure to check out all your options; you might qualify for some tactical opportunities. For example, Exchange Server 2000 enterprise agreement customers are entitled to a free upgrade to Office Live Communication Server 2003. And some of the collaboration-related capabilities are bundled at no additional cost: Windows SharePoint Services is included with Windows Server 2003.

Finally, if you need to migrate or integrate with collaborative applications built on earlier Microsoft or competitive products, explore complementary offerings from vendors such as CASAHL. Consider Groove if you require robust, secure, off-line/edge-based collaboration with a community that isn't composed entirely of AD users.

Microsoft's collaboration strategy and collaboration-related products are indeed dynamic: They're useful for both realtime and asynchronous interaction, have been improved significantly in 2003 product releases and post-2003 product plans, and are forceful as integral parts of Windows and Office. Microsoft won't vanquish all other collaboration software vendors completely anytime soon, but with its refined collaboration value proposition for 2003 and a revised collaboration strategy, it's clear the company recognizes the value shift from personal to interpersonal productivity.

About the Author
Peter O'Kelly is an independent software industry analyst, consultant, and author with more than 20 years of experience in software product management and strategy, application development, and consulting. You can reach Peter by e-mail at or log onto his blog at http://pbokelly.blogspot.com.