SharePoint was only part of the story here at Microsoft’s TechEd conference in Atlanta, but it’s a part whose role is becoming larger. At Monday’s opening keynote, corporate senior VP of server and tools marketing Robert Wahbe described a vision where the bulk of computing shifts into the cloud and onto mobile devices. They displayed a phone running Office productivity tools with secure communication that convinced me that while Microsoft is decidedly late to the smartphone table, it will take a lion’s share of the market with phones that people can use to do real work, not merely answer e-mails or exchange texts.
With a Windows Phone 7 device running a mobile app that connects to the Office tools in a cloud, workers can view documents or spreadsheets, comment on ongoing projects, and do most of the things they can now do at their desks.
The downside of this, of course, is that now our bosses will expect us to work 24×7.
Microsoft this week announced that service pack 1 for SharePoint 2010 will be out in late June, with support for Google’s Chrome browser. With iOS and Android support also being baked into Microsoft’s tools, it’s clear the company gets that it can’t move everyone onto Windows and IE, so it might as well make its software available for other platforms. Read more below.
—David
