RSS a Pillar of Microsoft Strategy

RSS has evidently become a strong pillar of Microsoft strategy. Wish I came up with this statement.

No, it's Dana Gardner at ZDNET, also providing some amazing insight in to just how much Microsoft is betting on RSS:

"Microsoft is using RSS 2.0 as a major conduit of myriad content ? including business-to-business applications interactions ? inside, across, and for wide area import/export of feeds throughout its software systems. Remember the digital nervous system? Well, RSS just became a new variety of spine.

"According to Microsoft, in IE 7, expect powerful auto discovery of feeds, with a graphical, orderly and indexed view of the feeds available and/or in use as subscriptions. Businesses will be quickly able to use RSS to link their cross-organizational activities ? first for informational purposes, but quickly elevating, I forecast, to process-level and potentially workflow efficiencies. There will be RSS feeds in tools, in business apps, within the platform, and as an adjunct to the Windows Communications Foundation. Expect its use across media types. RSS will also pick up where OLE left off long ago when it comes to parlaying information in automated and sequential distribution among and between XML-rich Office applications.

Signs of this are already coming true.

The Register reports that Microsoft will be implementing RSS in the third edition of its CRM software, to enable users to receive updated sales information as it becomes available, thus saving additional time. Microsoft sees RSS as a great way to publish information to partners, customers and employees.

And if that's not enough, Microsoft is urging Windows Vista developers to use RSS to bring data to users. It's actually on their top 10 "commandments" list.

The RSS marketing future is getting closer every day.