SP2010 has been introduced and what we had in mind with TunnelPoint will be easier with SP2010. When companies will move to the cloud with SP2010 more public SP sites will become data providers, I'm convinced. If you ever heard of Web 3.0 and the semantic web did you ever realize that there is a big move towards web services and the data they provide?

I’m a big believer of an Internet of Services, where services are ubiquitous; an Internet of Things where in principle every physical object becomes an online addressable resource (see iPhone, persistent connection); a Mobile Internet where 24/7 seamless connectivity over multiple devices is the norm; and the need for semantics in order to meet the challenges presented by the dramatic increase in the scale of content and users.(source: Serviceweb 3.0 EU).

When talking about moving to the cloud the larger scope is always an Internet of Services IMO. Many companies are capable of producing very valuable information but not many companies are capable of producing very capable applications on desktops, mobiles or other devices. This is where the web services approach is at its best, companies approach developers to build applications around there data (I don’t believe in browsing on a device, sucks compared to native apps).

With the new capabilities of SP2010: client OM, REST, web services and storage of more items and data, a SharePoint portal becomes another online addressable resource. Some will say “oh Hans this will never happen because of security”, really? Start looking around and think about the new interfaces in SP2010, why does MS provide all this stuff? I think it has to do with the vision of Microsoft (see some old Bill G. essays), it really believes in an always connected world on different devices/products (desktop, mobile, tablet, surface, SharePoint). Sure, MS would like you to use al their software and devices :-) For me personally the interface is exchangeable, the data however, not!

The old perception is that closed data is a competitive advantage but the new reality is that open data is a competitive advantage (source: ReadWriteWeb). Personally I'm already a big believer for many years but SharePoint did not really offer much in terms of an active web service community or .NET developers that are looking for integration of external services into SharePoint (or I completely missed it). That has nothing to do with skills but more with focus.

For me the one part of Web 3.0 is really gaining attention and that is web services. Did you ever think about the fact that the iPhone is the perfect example of the usage of web services? A lot of the popular apps. use web services behind the scenes. Things like: traffic information, trip planning, Google Maps, LBS etc. Connected “Things” start happening too, ever heard of a service called Pachube or devices like the Chumby?

If we look at Enterprises and public SharePoint URLs, more will open up the coming years. Actually, a lot are already open because all web services related to SharePoint are enabled. Take BPOS, all is enabled out of the box.

So how does TunnelPoint fit into this story Hans? Well, we are aiming to be the connection to and from SharePoint. We do the heavy lifting and we take care of the data transformation. In SP2010 we can do more and we can do it easier because of REST (seen it and it is awesome). It is our goal to work together with developers that are believers of this approach, you can build a TunnelPoint connector too! Right now we transform data to SharePoint but one day in the future we will be capable of doing it the other way around (for example to serve your list as a KML file). Sure, this could all be done by building server side code but we want to stick to the cloud offering without the need to touch your very valuable and business critical SharePoint infrastructure.

You can find a lot of information about the Future of The web and the European Union has kicked off a huge investment in Web 3.0. For more information see the site. There is also a very interesting video here.

Another initiative is the European web service finder over here.