Sharepoint playing nicely with Enterprise Web 2.0

What have Microsoft Sharepoint, Atlassian's Confluence wiki and Newsgator all got in common?

• Atlassian has introduced its Sharepoint Connector for Confluence; and
• Newsgator has released NewsGator Social Sites 1.1 for Sharepoint.

There has been plenty of analysis and commentary on this news:

• Ross says that "It shows that Microsoft recognizes that its Enterprise 2.0 offering (what Microsoft calls “social computing”) needs bolstering."
• On Read/WriteWeb, "This is another great example of big vendors partnering with more agile, and smarter, startups to create better Web Office functionality in their products. It's win-win for both companies".
• Jevon MacDonald comments "Sharepoint integration is a no-brainer for almost any enterprise software company... Newsgator and Atlassian have built fantastic businesses without having to focus solely, or at all, on Sharepoint, but both have undoubtedly been feeling some pressure from customers to offer a higher level of integration" and goes on to ask some critical questions about why and what this means for both of these vendors.
• Euan also said something funny about it, but something that only other poms might understand.
• And there is plenty more if you going looking...

What do I think? Its all good - remembering that Sharepoint is really a broad horizontal portal platform first, I know of at least one company that was concerned about the silos created by having both Sharepoint and Confluence in place, but the connector could be the way of bringing everything together. However, lets not forget that Social Text also has an integration for Sharepoint that it released last year and I'm not sure if that revolutionised how Sharepoint is being used.

I'm also increasingly of the opinion that RSS is an essential infrastructure service in the Enterprise Web 2.0 stack, so I'm also very positive about what Newsgator is doing and in fact see this having a broader impact than a wiki component, like the Confluence Connector.

Also, bearing in mind Euan's point, its not (just?) the technology that makes Enterprise 2.0.

Technorati tags: Microsoft, Microsoft SharePoint, Enterprise 2.0, Enterprise RSS, Enteprise Web 2.0, Atlassian, Confluence, Newsgator, Portals, Ross Dawson, Read/WriteWeb, Jevon Macdonald, Euan Semple