Wave vs SharePoint, the battle is on or over before it starts?

Frankly I am not sure where the meme that Wave would confront SharePoint came from. Google already has an alternative to SharePoint function in Google Docs, an alternative which has flopped so far. Looking above you see Wave, which is a very interesting mixture of email, chat and IM. It could be a very powerful collaborative tool, but its rather unstructured. I imagine we will see people creating all kinds of interesting things out of Waves just like we have seen new uses of Twitter emerging from what seemed like a silly tool.




SharePoint 2010 remians a more structured conventional tool. Generally I find SharePoint comes in an replaces something already in place. Companies could be sharing documents via a EDRMS system or on files and will move to Document Shares to reduce cost or make easier. Blogs will be moved to SharePoint. Sometimes even WCM.



SharePoint collaboration is by its nature slower than Wave. SharePoint is not a real time tool, it is a collaborative tool like a library can be a collaborative tool. You check out your document, make your changes, check back in. An old established process just made faster and more automated and extended to the entire Enterprise. There is nothing really new in Web 2.0. My mother essentially had the job that SharePoint does for years.

It is possible that if people start using Wave they may find they need less of the total SharePoint stack. And don't get me wrong Wave is really cool, but at present I am having a hard time finding a better use for it then MSN. In fact so far my Waves have moved to MSN.