Software News

Peering into Office 12

Ina Fried CNET News

Published: 19 May 2005 13:35 BST

As for the desktop software itself, Office 12 will continue the program's evolution from one that enhances individual productivity to one that can also help office dwellers work better together. Here, Microsoft is counting on advances from both its own SharePoint and Real-Time Communications groups as well as from recently acquired Groove Networks, which specialises in such software.

The company has also been working hard to position Office as a good way to connect to other business software such as customer relationship management and enterprise resource planning software from companies such as Siebel and SAP. Microsoft and SAP last month announced a joint effort, code-named Mendocino, aimed at allowing access to SAP data using both the Excel and Outlook components of Office. Meanwhile, Microsoft had an internal effort, known as Project Elixir, in which its own sales force used Office's Outlook program to access information in its Siebel system.

"That offers a glimpse of relief," said AMR Research analyst Jim Murphy. Large businesses, which have been increasingly narrowing their key software vendors, are anxious to see the remaining companies collaborate more, Murphy said. But Murphy noted that customers are also sceptical, seeing the large software players as still angling for each other's turf.

Analysts also said Microsoft cannot afford to focus solely on collaboration and business process automation given that a significant chunk of sales are to small businesses and consumers. With Office 2003, too many of the new features were aimed at that crowd, said Directions on Microsoft's Helm.

"They can't invest all of the improvements in Office in group work," Helm said. "One knock on Office 2003 is that there wasn't much there for the individual user to upgrade."

And AMR's Murphy noted that the individual home user is often a corporate worker who — if they like a new version — can push their company to upgrade. Whereas it often takes big businesses a long time to move to a new version of Office, consumers often move quicker, typically by purchasing a new PC with the latest version of the software installed.

"This is actually a good sort of marketing for Microsoft," he said.