News From Microsoft
TechED:
Information
Bridge Framework
At
its' TechED conference this week, Microsoft announced new Web
Services tools, based in XML, to bridge the gap between employee
desktops running Microsoft Office and enterprise systems.
The
emphasis is on reducing the time it takes for information works to
capture, analyze, report on, publish, process, communication and
collaborates on data. If you’ve been following some of our writing
on the On Demand Business environment you’ll recognize this idea
right away. It’s
about making information available in real time – or as close to
real time as possible.
Microsoft’s Information Bridge Framework is
a set of tools and technologies that uses eXtended Markup Language (XML)
and Web services to extend the Microsoft Office System. It allows
information workers to stay in familiar Microsoft Office programs
such as Word and Excel and access enterprise information directly,
rather than requiring the worker to go back and forth via a number
of interfaces, to a number of different applications. Instead,
Information Bridge Framework establishes dynamic digital inks
between company data on enterprise
Microsoft
expects that developers and ISVs will use the framework to create
and deploy custom solutions linking an organization’s existing IT
infrastructure and applications to Microsoft Office applications.
The application can be refreshed with new data automatically,
or under user control. The Information Bridge Framework works by
using enterprise application metadata, exposed as XML Web Services,
as an input to the Metadata Designer to create an Office Solution by
chaining interactions together and linking them to specific document
content.
The
goal is a more efficient worker – and a more responsive business.
Microsoft
has been working for some time now to urge developers to see Office
as a platform rather than an application suite.
This should be thought of, we’d think, as another step in
that process.
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