Robert Guth wrote an artcile in today's Wall Street Journal entitled "Microsft Embeds Sleeper in Business Software".  For those in the software industry (and more specifically those with acollaboration background) the article is an extremely familiar rehash of Micrsoft's effort to wage "collaboration" war against IBM, Orcale, Adobe, and others to collect and control massive amonts of "work related" data being generated by businesses everyday.

The artcile tells the story of Miam Dade County public schools and how they were planning to go with IBM for a next gen collaboration solution only to realize (at the last minute) that they had already paid for, and deployed, a latent technology called Sharepoint as part of the Windows Server Operating System.  In the end, they chose Microsoft because it seemed like the right thing to do based on the fact that WSS was already bundled into their existing infrastructure.  

In terms of the Microsoft strategy with Sharepoint, i admit the article is absolutely spot on the money -- especially as it relates to the battle for mid market and enterprise customers (large businesses with IT departments). But what about the millions of small businesses without IT departments???  The simple facts are:

• SMBs also have incredibly valuable data.
• SMBs want to store this data to get more done.
• SMBs want it to be easy to use, inexpensive, and delivered as a service.
• SMBs want the service from someone that they know and trust (like BT and Telus).

Collaboration for the small businesses masses.  That's what i am talking about.  And, that's what evolved broadband service provdiers are capable delivering.