Mary Jo Foley posts about a Q&A session at the end of Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer’s Convergence conference keynote address.  Where Ballmer was asked about the significance of SharePoint in Microsoft’s world adding to the fact that Software+Services is becoming a trend. Steve Ballmer states that:

“SharePoint is the definitive OS or platform for the middle tier,” Ballmer explained. It is the “missing link” between personal productivity and line-of-business applications. [source: zdnet]

Its a good vision of what’s to come with SharePoint. Recently, we heard about Microsoft Announces New Package to Extend Microsoft Dynamics ERP Solutions to Microsoft Office Users. This integration of Dynamics and SharePoint was interesting with few noticing the impact of this.

SharePoint on the surface is esstentially similiar to Google Personalized Homepage, PageFlakes and other customized portals.   Those that allow you to define what data is displayed and where.   SharePoint is years ahead of its competition, hence the difference in price tag.

Is it a trend?  I definitely see this as a huge possibility.  With the emergence of Web Parts aka Widgets /Gadgets, this puts SharePoint in a very sensibile position for Microsoft to push their Live brand on to their corporate users.  Why not provide bits of data in a small package that users can attach to their MySite?  They are starting off with Dynamics and will possibly continue adding more integration packages.

Source:  SharePoint: The Next Big “Operating System” from Microsoft?