Search Me, Redux
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Some Microsoft Watch commenters seem to misunderstand Microsoft's search strategy. We want to properly lay out the facts. |
The problematic comments to the post "Search Me" suggest that there is no search dependency between Office 2007, SharePoint Server 2007 and Windows Vista. The dependency is certainty.
Microsoft has long advocated a strategy called "better together." Microsoft employees don't much use the term anymore, but the approach continues. The idea: use of one product is good, but better with another product and even better with a third or fourth product.
Office 2007 has pretty good search capabilities out of the box. But the search experience is much better with Windows Vista and better still with SharePoint Server 2007. Each product extends the functionality. The same can be said of Exchange Server 2007 and even predecessor products. Office and Exchange provide a better search experience than Office alone. Global address books or shared calendars are good examples.
Search Tool reaches Far
Microsoft has long advocated a "Smart Client" strategy, where Office is the front end to back-end enterprise data. The extension of search through SharePoint Sever is product implementation of this strategy.
Companies that want to enable robust enterprise search from Office 2007 will find that Microsoft expects them to use SharePoint Server 2007. Microsoft also offers a separate product, SharePoint Server 2007 for Search, for companies that need limited enterprise search capabilities but not the portal features.
I cannot understate the strategic importance that Microsoft places on SharePoint Server, particularly with respect to search.
SharePoint is the cornerstone of Microsoft's enterprise search strategy, particularly following the demise of WinFS. With SharePoint, Microsoft pushes a strategy it calls Enterprise Content Management. The approach embraces six functional categories: business intelligence, business processes, collaboration, content management, portal and search.
"Microsoft is putting a lot of freight on SharePoint," said Directions on Microsoft analyst Paul DeGroot.
SharePoint has other roles. In July 2003, soon after Microsoft declared search as a strategic technology, the company made SharePoint Server the search mechanism for Microsoft.com. Microsoft researcher Stephen Robertson developed the algorithm used for the improved search capabilities.
Office Live is another SharePoint role. "Office Live is the cheapest version of hosted SharePoint out there," DeGroot said.
Don't be a Stranger
SharePoint is important to Microsoft. You, the readers, are important to Microsoft Watch. We want your feedback. I encourage commenters to intelligently post. For commenters that accuse us of incorrect information, identify yourself. If you have something important to say, let people know who you really are. Don't hide behind anonymous commenting.
Some commenters attack me or other Microsoft Watch bloggers. I've got a thick skin. But attacks against my mother or sister, those are way out of line. They undermine your credibility as a commenter, too.
Another option is to send e-mail via our tips mailbox. I receive the e-mails, and I do respond to people that identify who they are.
We love to get users into the stories. Through e-mail contact, verification of identity and with your permission, your comments could make it into one of the Microsoft Watch posts. That is a much larger platform for expressing your viewpoint than the comments. If you've got something important to say, we and the other Microsoft Watch readers want to hear it.
Comments (10)
"I encourage commenters to intelligently post" - split infinitive and therefore NOT intelligent.
Posted by matchwalk | December 6, 2006 11:39 AM
"I encourage commenters to intelligently post" - split infinitive and therefore not particularly intelligent.
Posted by matchwalk | December 6, 2006 11:40 AM
I could say something on the commenting issue, but I'll refrain ... One relevant thing - Microsoft may have a poor reputation for search that they'll have trouble getting over - anyone remember the file finding dialog in Win 9x and 2K? Or even the mess that is the XP file find setup?
Posted by Bruce IV | December 6, 2006 12:17 PM
I've read both of the posts on this subject several times and here's the problem as I see it, Joe. I still have no idea what you are talking about. How about some specific, "hey, I wish search could do this". Sharepoint is much about collaboration, so sure if I want to search documents that are being shared or are intended to be publicly available across my business, I'd probably need Sharepoint. But to find documents that have a specific text in them or by a specific name, I'm pretty sure search based on file indexes will do the trick.
This article is the first I've heard of the "Sharepoint for Search", but I'm pretty sure I've read of an enterprise version of desktop search being provided by Microsoft. How does that stack up?
I'm in no way an expert on the matter, but I don't recall anything about WinFS that would make searching office documents that much easier.
Sure, some of the commenters on the previous post could have said it nicer, but the problem is that you are making blanket statements without really providing any meat. Again, you say search isn't good enough in Vista - good enough for what? You don't like folders? What does folders have to do with searching for documents??? Maybe I should have more of an understanding of the topic before reading your article(s). Is that a fair expectation?
Posted by Dan | December 6, 2006 2:41 PM
Without commenting on any specific article or Joe as a person, I think why this conflict between MS Watch readers and the bloggers (ahem, read Joe here) is taking place.
People subscribing to this blog were used to reading articles from Mary Jo who had a different way of presenting things and probably had different opinion on MS. By keeping the same name for the blog and changing the style and content of the articles, there is now a conflict in expectation between the readers and the writer.
There are tons of other sites that are critical on MS or have different opinion than Mary Jo. I now consider this to be one of them. So to match my expectation, I have switched to http://blogs.zdnet.com/microsoft - thats where Mary Jo is now writing.
Posted by Nathan | December 6, 2006 3:23 PM
>>Mary Jo who had a different way of presenting things and probably had different opinion on MS
Nathan makes a very good point. I've noticed this too. In fact I wasn't aware that Mary Jo had left until I read Nathans reply. I'm doing that same and subscribing to ZDNet to get a different perspective.
Posted by Vic | December 6, 2006 5:12 PM
I will only comment by placing this http://www.windows-now.com/blogs/robert/archive/2006/12/01/vista-and-office-2007-search-is-not-dependent-on-sharepoint.aspx
By Robert Mclaws which was in response to the first article which shows something doesn't it ?
It shows that the first article and now this one are NOT correct !
There ... for you people who think that I have been unnecessarily hard on Joe Wilcox there my proof.
Where there is smoke there is usually a fire, I have been saying for ages now that Joe is "anti" Microsoft and this proves it !
Posted by Neil | December 6, 2006 8:14 PM
I used to work for Microsoft and my job was to basically understand the Microsoft "stack" end to end so that I could then explain the differences and value that any one part or an aggregation of parts brought to the enterprise. Your allusion to "better together" is correct but it is a bit misleading in the context that you used it.
There is zero dependency between any of the search facilities you pointed out but that is talking at the technology level. At the business value level, the facilities are layered representations of Microsoft's search strategy and their ability to translate that value into something that is tangible to the enterprise.
IMO, in order for Microsoft to keep the Office cash cow mooing happily, they have shifted their productivity focus from the individual to the group (department, division, LOB, company, etc.) and that really started with Office XP and the advent of the task pane. That was in reality a small "portal framework" but was not leveraged extensively because SharePoint (at the time) really wasn't robust enough. With Office 2003 they significantly increased the functionality of SharePoint which directly affected the task pane and (in conjunction with Smart Tags and the IW Bridge Framework) allowed people to actually surface back-end applications up through the Office interface.
Look at Duet (the SAP integration) as the logical progression of that work.
So in today's iteration of Office, SharePoint is not a separate silo running next to the stack (as it was previously) but is an integral lower layer upon which most of Office 2007 is built. The IW Bridge Framework is now the Business Catalog and soon to be LOBi and it all is targeted at making Office THE single business interface.
If that is indeed the strategy (and I believe it is), then you can see where enterprise search fits and, as the groups shrink and become the individual, where Office and then the OS search comes into play. Especially as the OS (Vista running to Longhorn server) is made more aware of each of the other facilities and can leverage the indices across the enterprise. Many documents, after all, reside at the user level and they too can add value as long as they can be discovered and used.
So, to make a long story a bit longer, your characterization of "better together" was correct only from a conceptual perspective and not a technology perspective.
Posted by Trevor Williamson | December 7, 2006 2:24 PM
I used to work for Microsoft and my job was to basically understand the Microsoft "stack" end to end so that I could then explain the differences and value that any one part or an aggregation of parts brought to the enterprise. Your allusion to "better together" is correct but it is a bit misleading in the context that you used it.
There is zero dependency between any of the search facilities you pointed out but that is talking at the technology level. At the business value level, the facilities are layered representations of Microsoft's search strategy and their ability to translate that value into something that is tangible to the enterprise.
IMO, in order for Microsoft to keep the Office cash cow mooing happily, they have shifted their productivity focus from the individual to the group (department, division, LOB, company, etc.) and that really started with Office XP and the advent of the task pane. That was in reality a small "portal framework" but was not leveraged extensively because SharePoint (at the time) really wasn't robust enough. With Office 2003 they significantly increased the functionality of SharePoint which directly affected the task pane and (in conjunction with Smart Tags and the IW Bridge Framework) allowed people to actually surface back-end applications up through the Office interface.
Look at Duet (the SAP integration) as the logical progression of that work.
So in today's iteration of Office, SharePoint is not a separate silo running next to the stack (as it was previously) but is an integral lower layer upon which most of Office 2007 is built. The IW Bridge Framework is now the Business Catalog and soon to be LOBi and it all is targeted at making Office THE single business interface.
If that is indeed the strategy (and I believe it is), then you can see where enterprise search fits and, as the groups shrink and become the individual, where Office and then the OS search comes into play. Especially as the OS (Vista running to Longhorn server) is made more aware of each of the other facilities and can leverage the indices across the enterprise. Many documents, after all, reside at the user level and they too can add value as long as they can be discovered and used.
So, to make a long story a bit longer, your characterization of "better together" was correct only from a conceptual perspective and not a technology perspective.
Posted by Trevor Williamson | December 7, 2006 2:24 PM
Don't know why why I was double posted, by the way.
Posted by Trevor Williamson | December 7, 2006 2:46 PM