What SharePoint is:

This is an excerpt of some references in an email I was send last night by my team lead at Campus Management. Overall, I would say that 3% of employees are supportive of a new SharePoint 2007 Environment... This is Wrong! These numbers should be higher! The word needs to get to our employees faster and the word is this: "SharePoint is the definitive OS or platform for the middle tier"

http://weblog.infoworld.com/openresource/archives/2007/04/while_you_were.html
SharePoint is its new operating system - the hub or platform upon which its hold on the enterprise tightens and extends. No matter what product you're selling into the enterprise, if you don't have a SharePoint story, you're in trouble.
http://blogs.zdnet.com/microsoft/?p=327
Microsoft officials increasingly are talking up "Software + Services," as opposed to "Software as a Service" in explaining Microsoft's future. So how does Microsoft keep the growing family of business services it is introducing tethered to on-premise software?
SharePoint Server is the answer. Not Windows. Not Windows Server. Not Office. SharePoint.
Ballmer told the Convergence questioner he was dead-on in his thinking.
"SharePoint is the definitive OS or platform for the middle tier," Ballmer explained.
http://www.sharepointbuzz.com/index.php/2007/03/15/sharepoint-the-next-big-operating-system-from-Microsoft/
Its a good vision of what's to come with SharePoint. Recently, we heard about Microsoft Announces New Package to Extend Microsoft Dynamics ERP Solutions to Microsoft Office Users. This integration of Dynamics and SharePoint was interesting with few noticing the impact of this.
http://www.it-director.com/business/content.php?cid=9570 (this is about SharePoint being used by the DOE after complying with governmental standards, but pertinent here)
…"We believe that this announcement is noteworthy because it seems to confirm our belief that SharePoint is likely to emerge as a very strategic product for Microsoft in the enterprise market—more strategic than it would seem at the moment—and that Microsoft recognizes the leverage generated by conformance with government standards. We believe that SharePoint is Microsoft's way of attempting to seize the center ground, and not the battlefield occupied by SQL against Oracle, nor the operating system battle, but a way to be at the eye of the storm: the ultimate repository of all information regardless of format"…..
http://planetmoss.blogspot.com/2007/06/more-information-about-sharepoint-web.html
It sure feels like a tectonic shift in the web programming world is happening...the tricky part is seeing which way the ground's moving!