Among the buzz at Microsoft's Professional Developers' Conference came demos of RSS and Workflow infrastructure built into the forthcoming "Vista" operating system. Together with forthcoming Office 12 enhancements and continued wide adoption of SharePoint, Microsoft could finally become a fairly robust ECM player. Except that...

1. It can take years for new Microsoft technologies to be adopted and refined by the company's all-important reseller channel;
2. Microsoft sometimes misjudges the marketplace and their customers (c.f. lackluster Web CMS product);
3. The company does not have a great record with 1.0 releases.

Microsoft shares something with Bill Gates' sparring partner, Napoleon Dynamite: they try...fail...try again...and often end up doing a pretty good job, even it's painful to witness along the way. Dan Elam, a very smart commentator on these things, pointed out on the phone today that Microsoft could have a major impact if prospective ECM customers delay working with other suppliers to see whether Microsoft delivers something cheaper and simpler. Even now, many enterprises are experimenting with SharePoint before investing in other collaboration technologies. I would still advise that if you have a content management problem right now, you should go out and address it with one of the many mature tools in the marketplace -- keeping an opportunistic eye on forthcoming Microsoft offerings, but not waiting for cavalry from Redmond to rush in and save the day.