Drupal founder on Sharepoint

Dries Buytaert, the founder and maintainer of the excellent web CMS, Drupal, talks today about Sharepoint 2007. He calls it (and its "ilk" of software) "Collaboration Management Software," instead of "Content Management Software." I like that distinction. It takes the emphasis off the content - which is just static and a bit dull - and moves it to the locus of importance: people, and the work they do with other people.

Given the explosive rise of this market (Sharepoint, alone, went from $0 to $500,000,000 in just its first three years), it is shocking how little the industry is doing to solve the same customer problems (and thereby compete with Microsoft) that Sharepoint envisions. Dries mentions Alfresco as the leading open source alternative to Sharepoint. Fine. But where is Oracle in this? IBM? Etc.?

Some context. My last role at Novell before I left was analyzing the Sharepoint threat. Microsoft was (and I suppose still is, whatever the psuedo-Glasnost we're supposed to be imbibing) using Sharepoint to push Linux out of the data center. It is a fantastic way to lock up an enterprise's content in a closed-source, no-standards repository such that Microsoft owns that company's IT future, because content is the heart of any enterprise.

It is not enough to be an operating system, ERP, CRM, etc. vendor anymore. You need to have a content story. Yesterday it was important, but not critical. Today, it is mandatory.

The difficulty will be in ensuring that competitive offerings have tight integration with both Microsoft technologies and varioius software pieces that embrace and extend Sharepoint's vision. I personally think Sharepint is a great product, but a little light in some areas that customers think are important. I also think there will be interesting opportunities to both tie into Sharepoint (partner) and compete at the same time, as Documentum is doing.

Dries writes:

I wonder what impact the introduction of SharePoint 2007 will have. What was once an important Drupal differentiator (i.e. bundling a wide variety of functionality into a single platform) will finally become commodity in 2007. Instead, seamless integration with other applications might become essential to compete? Interesting times!

Indeed.