I have spent the last couple of months getting up-to-speed on Microsoft Sharepoint Portal Server (MOSS) 2007 and I must say - I AM IMPRESSED.

A recent article in Wall Street Journal by By ROBERT A. GUTH on the April 24, 2007; Page B1 sums it up really nicely and I quote a couple of sentences from there:

Microsoft Embeds Sleeper in Business Software (I, personally, think the 'Business Software' bit is a bit of a misnomer)

 SharePoint is now Microsoft's contender in an emerging battle over collaboration software with companies from a cross section of the technology industry ...

To date, largely unheralded, Microsoft has sold 85 million licenses to the enhanced version of SharePoint across 17,000 companies. No marketing campaigns are in the works

Read the full article here.

I say it takes a lot, besides features and functionality, to be able to sell without any marketing blitz. Really, what today comes free (pre-installed) that offers Web 2.0 features and functionality (RSS, Blogs, Wikis, Suverys, Sites, Discussion Forums, Document Library), right-out-of-the-box ?

And - We are not done. MOSS 2007 SP1 will come with additional features and functionality that will anchor it as probably one of the best-kept secrets and sleeper Microsoft products of all time that will really make it hard for anyone (customers, partners, communities, alike) to ignore.

Watch out in the blogsphere or here for those announcements.