Treating MSOffice As A Platform

For several years, Microsoft has been telling us to treat Office not just as its best-selling application, but also as a platform for both professional developers and customers.  Recently we spoke with Office XP Product Manager Nicole von Kaenel about how this effort is progressing.

Microsoft has been working with both partners and customers, especially with Smart Tags and its Web Services Tool Kit.  Nicole mentioned customer General Motors where CIO Tony Scott has been evaluating the Microsoft Web Services (.Net) Tool Kit to see how to bring information from the GM Sales Data Base into Office applications.  Microsoft facilitates this by offering XML support in Excel and Access, with other Office applications to follow (we, of course, are waiting for Word). 

Microsoft is also working on improvements to Office, both in creating more solutions on top of the Office XP Suite as well as making 21^st century additions to Office function.

We discussed, for example, adding more function to Outlook, recognizing how much time many of us spent in our Email.  It would be nice, for example, to be able to do better filing and to have better support for off-line usage. 

Microsoft is recognizing the one year anniversary of XP in May by opening a Desktop Deployment Center to Support Deploying Windows and office together.  It starts with a 10-week Webcast series on Tuesday, April 23^rd.  Each Tuesday, at 10 a.m. PDT, a Microsoft or outside expert would provide a one-hour interactive session on some part of the deployment process, from planning to various installation scenarios (scripted, image-based), migrations, to Windows and Office testing and piloting, to security.

Microsoft promises more news in May, which should be a lively time period for Office users of all flavors, since that’s also the time period when we’re anticipating Sun shipping StarOffice 6 and the SunONE Webtop server-based version of StarOffice then, as well.  

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