MS CMS and MS SharePoint Merging Architectures

Not surprisingly, Microsoft is working on merging the core architectures of the SharePoint Portal and Microsoft Content Management Server (MCMS) products. The first version of the new architecture is due out with the Office 12 release late next year. In one of the first public statements on the topic, Chris Capossela, Microsoft's group vice president of Information Worker Product Group, indicated that the future of the two products was around more common technologies and an integration, if not outright convergence."We do think of SharePoint and CMS very much together. CMS is for running Internet sites, SharePoint for intranet sites and team collaboration," says Capossela. The short term MCMS focus is on supporting Visual Studio 2005, .NET 2.0, and SQL Server 2005 with the coming MCMS 2002 Service Pack 2 (announced June 2005) and then further convergence during the Office 12 release cycle. Microsoft has not yet indicated whether SharePoint and MCMS will actually be merged into a single offering. [via CRN, Heather Solomon, Andrew Connell]