I was at Microsoft’s offices in Mountain View last Friday; the guest of Don Campbell, Microsoft’s Office 2007 Evangelist. I have to say that I was really impressed with what I saw.

Not all the news has been great for Microsoft recently. Microsoft is shuffling executives, and bloggers are even suggesting that Microsoft further delay Vista because of concerns of bugs.

When it comes to Web 2.0, there are some people counting Microsoft out.

That is simply crazy.

Here are 5 reasons why you have to take Microsoft’s Enterprise 2.0 Battle Plan seriously:

1. Microsoft has become a company that listens

   All the proof that I needed was the fact that Don invited me to come for a visit. But if you don’t believe me that they listen, send Don an email. My guess is that you will hear back from him.

   But the trend of Microsoft Listening is much broader than Don’s efforts. Check out Ray Ozzie’s blog and the buzz around the brilliant Live Clipboard initiative.

   Live Clipboard is Cut & Paste on steroids. Microsoft’s CTO, Ray Ozzie, invented it, and then opened the whole process up to public discussion.

   If you want to talk directly with the Live Clipboard team, contact Matt Augustine. Matt is a Software Design Engineer on the CTO Concept Development Team at Microsoft.

   All these people at Microsoft seem to have blogs. They are all accessible.

   Microsoft seems to have a new slogan: Be Nice.

   Be Nice asks a lot more of your people than Don’t be Evil.

2. 
   

   Excel Services

   Excel Server is the coolest thing I have seen in a very long while. The success of Web 2.0 and Enterprise 2.0 comes from a focus on finding simple ways to empower end users. If that is the criteria for success, then Excel Server is in a league of it’s own.

   With Excel Services, you can convert your Excel spreadsheets into a web based application at the push of a button.

   Start with a spreadsheet like this one:

   … press a few buttons, and you get a web page like this one:

   

   Now, anyone who can create a spreadsheet can create an interactive web based application.

   Why is this a big deal?

   In today’s enterprises, most IT projects never get built. The ROI on these small projects is simply too low. Or put another way, companies can’t justify bringing in developers and spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to solve small problems. This is a perfect example of the Chirs Anderson’s Long Tail.

   

   To address these problems, knowledge workers build work-arounds. Usually, super users build manual processes that generally involve Excel and a lot of manual cut and paste. The result is prone to operational risk and is inevitably inefficient.

   

   Excel Services radically changes the landscape. Now, those same super users are going to be capable of building their own solutions.

   The trick here is not to think of Excel as just a spreadsheet, but instead, to think of it as a development environment that is designed for business users. Gone is the need to translate between business users and IT engineers. Gone is the need to write specifications. Instead, systems can instantly “Get Real” based on working spreadsheets.

   

   There are a few interesting resources on Excel Services, including a blog entitled Microsoft Excel 2007 (nee Excel 12), which seems to be written mainly by David Gainer (though I am not 100% sure)

   One the entry that is certainly worth a read is Excel Services – Key Scenarios.

   David mentions 3 scenarios for Excel Services:

   1. Sharing spreadsheets through the browser
   2. Building business intelligence (BI) dashboards
   3. Reusing the logic encapsulated in Excel spreadsheets in custom applications

   I remain unconvinced on scenario #1 and #2 (do you really need a dashboard to do your job?)

   But, scenario #3 changes things substantially.

   Imagine being able to build interactive functionality directly into your blog posts, or your wiki posts. Sharepoint 2007 isn’t 100% there yet, but is is getting very close.
   



3. 
   

   My Site ( a bit like a People Page)

   Sharepoint’s idea of a “My Site” is similar to the People Pages I described in Real Enterprise Web 2.0 Scenarios - People.

   The My Site pages are a little over engineered - but it is always easier to take stuff out, rather than add stuff in.

   In most companies, I think that people simply need a standard way of describing themselves to all their colleagues. Despite differences in execution, Microsoft shares this vision.
   



4. 
   

   Word Blog via open API

   In Word 2007, you will be able to write a blog post to any kind of blog system via the MetaWeblog API

   You can find out more at Joe Friend: Microsoft Office Word.

   For yet another example of Microsoft’s openness check out this post: Word Blog HTML Quality. Obviously, the Microsoft Word 2007 is still hammering out some details, but they are happy to talk about it.

   The MetaWeblog API means that you can use Word to write to Movable Type, WordPress and Drupal.

   It is interesting to note that Google’s Blogger does not support this standard.



5. 
   

   Identity 2.0

   Don and I didn’t get a chance to spend too much time on this topic, but it was great to see that Kim Cameron’s ideas on the Laws of Identity are starting to permeate through-out the organization. More on this in future posts.
   

Sharepoint has a ways to go in other areas. While it supports blogs and wikis, I would not yet call it a true enterprise class system. Sharepoint 2007 is missing things like Blog Types and built in collaborative tag tools.

But, the race to build the tools that power Enterprise 2.0 has only just begun, and Microsoft is a definite contender.