MOSS is marketed by many as a portal for the enterprise, providing collaboration, applications, content management, document searching, and other tools. The question though is what is MOSS? Is it a portal, and what exactly is a portal? Why are we seeing a big push by Microsoft for MOSS? At every meeting with Microsoft they say “MOSS!” and with that they say so few get what MOSS actually is. 

Back in the late 80’s the world of the PC was difficult for the consumer. We had DOS, and it provided a way for developers to be able to create applications much faster than before, but it was still a pain for the consumer to work with their applications. Each application needed drivers for the various hardware that the software would use. For example, if I had a spreadsheet application and a word processing application I would need to hope that the manufacturers of each application created a driver for my particular piece of hardware. Each application I had most likely would not communicate with each other or open another application’s document types. Life was rough for the PC user back then. 

Enter Microsoft Windows. Windows enabled users to have a full view of their documents, and all the problems with drivers, and incompatibility went away (not entirely away I know, but it was a start). 

Eventually Windows for Workgroups enabled PC users to share documents and collaborate with each other. Granted this was very immature at the time, but it provided a mechanism to aid in communication for the enterprise and make it easy (at least easier) to do so. 

With subsequent versions of Windows, we received better applications. Microsoft Office dethroned many players like Lotus 123, Word Perfect, and others. One of the problems with those applications was again like the DOS days, they were application silos running independent of each other and not really communicating with each other. Microsoft Office came along and provided integration of the various document types. So instead of just printing out several document types, you could place graphs in context of your document. Soon Office grew to a point where you could share and review documents with others in the enterprise. Collaboration was beginning to take hold. 

So you had Windows handling the searching and access of documents on the network, and Office was your tool for editing those documents. We had collaboration of documents, what else could you want? Life was good. 

During this time, the popularity of the Web exploded. At first it was a novelty, something for placing a catalog up and showing off a company’s products. Then the web became more interactive with developers writing CGI scripts, and Microsoft came into the scene providing us with ASP, and IIS (actually HTX before that, but how many actually used it). These technologies allowed for centralized intersections for information, sites like Yahoo, AltaVista, Hotbot, and some others provided a means for people to come in and find the website they wanted from the vast amount of information. Something that Archie, Gopher, Veronica and Jughead (no, not the cartoon) just couldn’t provide anymore. 

Collaboration began in the consumer area of the Web; it was more than just searching. It became blogging, wikis, YouTube, and more. The web tools advanced to a point where highly interactive applications could be developed and supported by the major browsers on the market. It was getting time for the desktop and Web to merge. 

Enter MOSS, I think many developers don’t get what MOSS actually is, but I consider MOSS to be an Enterprise Operating System and that is one of the reasons we’re seeing a big push for it by Microsoft. MOSS brings file access to the user via the web browser, no more need to browse network shares for documents, rather, you use the enterprise search capabilities within MOSS to find your document. Meta information can be placed on the document for further content targeting. Before this was accomplished by the user using their own resources on the PC, silo applications like LiveLink, or some other application. 

Once you find your document, you can open it directly from MOSS as you would use your desktop OS. Just click and you’re off. MOSS provides integration with practically every content type within Office. If you want to share contacts, your calendar, or documents, you can do it all within MOSS. The idea is getting information out to people who need it, and creating relationships and interaction with documents and enterprise tools. 

As with an OS, MOSS provides the developer with a means to tie into the system and create their own custom applications (webparts). Just like an OS, the webparts can be used across MOSS installations and distributed to other MOSS installs. All enterprise applications become developed as a webpart, and eliminate the need to distribute them to the client. Maybe down the road we’ll see a SharePoint version of Office contained within MOSS and more applications to follow. Applications become centrally managed, reducing the need for support, and eliminating the need for distribution since they all run in a web browser. 

This barely scratches the surface of the capabilities of MOSS, but it is evident that MOSS does what an operating system does, but at a higher level. Unlike a PC operating system it’s not something that deals with the inner workings or hardware of the PC, rather it deals with the inner workings of the enterprise. It provides a means to create relationships with the parts of the enterprise, and bring those parts together to form a cohesive unit that can share and interact with each other. 

There is so much that MOSS does when you look under the hood that you can’t help but think of it as an Enterprise Operating System, maybe that’s why MOSS is the acronym used with the letters “OS” right there staring at us. If the plan for MOSS is aimed at being the OS for the Enterprise, then there is no doubt that getting MOSS implementations rolled out is of extreme importance to Microsoft. The company that owns the portal market in the next five to ten years will own the enterprise.