Microsoft Set to Unveil "Tahoe"

First debuted to the press at the end of July, "Tahoe" will be unveiled to developers in full at next month's Exchange Solutions Conference in Dallas. Tahoe is, in simplest terms, Microsoft's new document management server. Tahoe was initially discussed over a year ago and detailed to beta testers this summer only as an "exciting, unannounced Microsoft technology." Currently Beta 1, Tahoe testers are working to squash almost 150 bugs as of the last summary update. Beta coordinators also reported in the update, "even with the initial Beta1 feedback quieting down, we are still receiving daily postings in the newsgroups."

Tahoe has been designed to bring together document management, advanced search services, and an out-of-the-box intranet portal based on Exchange 2000. Microsoft told BetaNews, "It enables groups, from small teams to large organizations, to manage the creation of new content as well as organize existing content. Tahoe integrates seamlessly with Microsoft Office and the Windows Explorer, and exposes a web-based portal built on the Digital Dashboard framework. In addition, Tahoe delivers an easy-to-deploy, standalone version of the Web Storage System for collaboration solutions, and supports applications built using Office Designer."

Some of the goals of Beta 1 include storing 10,000 documents, crawling over two million documents, the ability to perform one search per second, and provide a custom platform for developing an intranet portal.

Tahoe will include both server and client applications, and an SDK for developers. It is scheduled for launch early next year.