Microsoft was late to both the Web CMS and Portal marketplaces, and did not get either right at first, but now Redmond seems to be moving ahead rapidly. Big changes are planned this year, as previously reported (here, here, and here), and now the SharePoint engineering team has created its own public blog. Compared to other competing vendors, large and small, that are planning big changes for 2006 (e.g. major upgrades at IBM, Open Text, Synkron), Microsoft has embraced what some call "naked conversations." Some final advice: If you're a customer and unclear about the future of the products (WSS, SPS, and CMS), contact your Microsoft account team about release dates and beta availability. Find out more in the upcoming Enterprise Portals Report.