Jim Rapoza

With Microsoft sending out the RTM code for Office 2007 this week, and with Vista RTM code due out any day now, this is definitely a busy month for Microsoft. And there's no underestimating the impact of these releases, with Vista representing the first new version of Windows in years and Office 2007 being the most impressive and truly significant upgrade of Office in close to ten years.

But getting lost a bit in the noise and hype is one Microsoft product release that, in the long run, may end up being the most important, especially on the enterprise side. And that product is Microsoft SharePoint Server 2007.

Listed ostensibly as a component of Office, SharePoint is actually much more. You can make a very good argument that SharePoint is now the core platform on which almost all Microsoft-based web, SOA, BPM, ecommerce, content management, collaboration and of course portal initiatives will be built.

In my initial tests of the early beta of SharePoint Server 2007 I saw some of this but as I've begun testing the more recent releases it's become much clearer that SharePoint will be the one must have product released this year for any Microsoft-centric business. And based on my tests so far, I am impressed.

As the final gold code of SharePoint Server 2007 comes out we at eWEEK Labs will finalize our tests and everyone will get to read the full review at that time.

But I already feel safe in saying that, while many companies will hold off on upgrading to Vista or the classic suite portion of Office 2007, companies serious about building a web and services infrastructure using Microsoft technology will find SharePoint Server 2007 to be an upgrade that they won't want to hold off on.