Matt Asay (InfoWorld): Sharepoint Microsoft’s new operating system

Matt Asay has some pretty bold statements on SharePoint :

… I’ve been beating on the Sharepoint drum for nearly two years now, but this is the first time I’ve seen anyone outside the ECM industry think along the same lines. Sharepoint is very clearly the future of Microsoft. And, not coincidentally, it is the future of how Microsoft locks customers into its software (benevolently or malevolently – you choose). …

… I like to think of Sharepoint as the tool used to make the document formats debate irrelevant. Open the formats, but close the document/content network, and we’re back at the beginning, with many years of milking monopoly rents.

There is no future for Documentum. Vignette. Interwoven. Filenet. Etc. But there is a future for Sharepoint, and for the open source competition. (Open source ECM has become highly strategic to a growing number of Global 2000 companies.) Sharepoint is exploding into the enterprise – $0 to $1B in just four years. …

Link to Sharepoint: Microsoft’s new operating system

Why not, SharePoint will be used by hundreds of millions of people in the coming years and therefor will have similar influence as Windows on the desktop …