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----- Original Message -----
From: "vishnu ramchandani" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[email protected]>
Sent: Friday, November 09, 2007 12:01 AM
Subject: [AI] 10 Burning Questions About Microsoft Office 2007
10 Burning Questions About Microsoft Office 2007
John Fontana, Network World
Nearly a year ago,
Microsoft
released Office 2007
to corporate users and so began the slow and
methodical evaluation of the software (unless, of
course, you were an
early adopter).
With migrations to
Vista
, which is intertwined with Office, slowly looming on
the drawing boards for many companies over the next
three years and beyond, here's a look at some
of the questions to help pick apart Office and figure
out how, when and where it fits into corporate
desktop, infrastructure, VoIP and software-as-a
service
plans, and the target it presents to
OpenOffice.org-based suites
and
online productivity tools
popping up on the Web.
What is different about
Office 2007?
Well, this isn't your father's office suite. Office
2007, or what
Microsoft
calls the Office System, comes in eight versions and
contains 15 programs, eight servers and seven services
or add-ons. Users don't have to buy or deploy
all those pieces, but the days of the Word-Excel-
PowerPoint
-Access bundle now seem quaint by comparison. With the
Office 2007 suite, users can set up content
management, integrate with online services, deploy
real-time
communication tools
and other infrastructures using Office system pieces.
That means Office is no longer a desktop decision made
by the desktop team. It is also an infrastructure
decision that ultimately involves IT. And it is a path
that must include consideration of how it will
integrate with third-party vendors, especially when
deployments hit the VoIP level.
What's also different in the interface, most notably
the ribbon, which presents commands organized into a
set of tabs. The tabs change on the ribbon to
display the commands that are most relevant for the
specific Office application open on the desktop.
What does this change mean?
Training issues. Be forewarned.
Why so many versions and what do they cost?
Office is no longer one size fits all. Microsoft has
customized SKUs to meet specific demands and hopefully
stimulate sales. Here are the
versions
and their prices:
Basic 2007 (no price quote, only available through
OEMs), Home and Student (US$149, with no upgrade
option), Standard ($399, or $239 to upgrade), Small
Business Edition ($449, or $279 to upgrade),
Professional 2007 ($499, or $329 for an upgrade),
Ultimate 2007 (priced at $679, or $539 for an
upgrade),
Professional Plus 2007 (volume licensing sales only),
Enterprise 2007 (volume licensing sales only).
Are there other licensing considerations?
Yes, all of the Office servers, all of the Web access
clients (Communicator, Outlook and Project), and the
Groove client are only available via volume licensing
contracts. Also users will need Software Assurance
contracts to have access to the new Office Enterprise
2007 and Office Professional Plus 2007. The main
difference between the two bundles is the inclusion of
Office Groove in the Enterprise Edition. Both will
ship with the Office Communicator client for
instant messaging and real-time communications,
including VoIP.
Here's one place where the Office System concept comes
into play on the back of the recently released
Office Communications Server 2007
, the Office Communicator client, and Office pieces
including Outlook and
SharePoint Server 2007
, to name a few. Presence is a cornerstone, allowing
instant access to colleagues and collaborators from
any file where a name is visible. Integration with
VoIP and the Live Meeting Web conferencing server
provides voice and video. The message is that Office
on the desktop becomes more feature rich when the
back-end servers are introduced to the network.
Why is there so much chatter about SharePoint Server
2007?
Microsoft wants to be a provider of content management
software and this is the vehicle to get there.
SharePoint
, in fact, is catching on like wildfire in
corporations, but it is still used mostly to host team
workspaces.
CEO Steve Ballmer
, however, last month pegged SharePoint as one of the
next billion-dollar businesses for Microsoft. Look for
SharePoint to become a platform for new social
networking features and Web 2.0 add-ons to Office. But
buyer beware, SharePoint Server 2007 requires an SQL
Server client access license to support some
of SharePoint's features. The cost of the client
access license can easily push the per-user cost of
running SharePoint up by $300-$500, according to
Forrester Research.
What is OBA, Duet, Live services?
Microsoft has packed something it calls "Solutions and
Services" around Office 2007 and is encouraging
partners and customers to tap into back-end systems
like ERP and CRM and extend/customize Office along
various avenues such as business process automation.
OBA
s, or Office Business Applications, are reference
applications with imposing names like Consumer
Engagement Reference Architecture for Health Plans.
Duet
is part of the Microsoft/SAP partnership to link
Office to SAP. And Microsoft also lumps into this
category project management and online services Live
Meeting and Office Live. Users can expect to get their
hands dirty with most of these extension projects.
What's new with Outlook?
The biggest difference is that
Outlook
now comes with Office and not Exchange. So why is
that a factor? Because those deploying Exchange 2007
will now need to buy Office licenses to get the
client software. What's new feature/functionality-wise
includes the To-do bar, which keeps tasks and
calendars close at hand; support for RSS feeds;
integration
with Windows Desktops Search; and an attachment
preview feature. What is more interesting, and could
impact current deployments, are the features that
have been cut. Gone are Outlook's native e-mail
editor, which has been replaced by Word; NetMeeting;
the Personal Address Book has migrated to the Contacts
folder; the TaskPad, which was replaced by the To-do
bar; Follow-Up flags give way to Task flags; the
Follow-up button is history; Schedule+; and security
settings moved to
Trust Center
. Those are just a handful of the changes in Outlook.
We heard so much lately about document formats what's
the story with Office?
If you have missed the extensive
debates
on Open Document Format and Office Open XML, the
default file format in Office 2007, quit hitting the
snooze button. While the ISO rejected standardization
for Open Office XML, don't look for Microsoft to adopt
Open Document Format any time soon. To support the
format (and to exchange files with any open Office
suites like those from
IBM,
Sun
and
ThinkFree
), a number of translators are available, including an
open source version
funded by Microsoft and available via Source Forge,
the open source software development Web site. The
tool was developed under the open source Berkeley
Software Distribution license and will translate
between the default Office 2007 file type and ODF.
Are there bugs?
It's not like Office is comparable to a warm summer
evening by a
Minnesota
lake, but yes. Even though Office 2007 was one of the
first products that went through Microsoft's Security
Development Lifecycle, it only took until February
(following a January launch) for
EEye Digital Security
to find the first Office 2007 remote code
vulnerability. In August, a vulnerability was fixed
that could allow remote code execution in Groove
Server 2007.
A similar vulnerability was patched in various Office
System 2007 pieces in May and July. In October,
Microsoft patched Excel to fix a bug that produced
multiplication errors
, and Microsoft issued a patch for vulnerability in
SharePoint Server 2007 that would let an attacker run
arbitrary code.
What's next and when might we see it?
Most of what is known about future Office versions
falls squarely in the speculation realm. The Windows
enthusiast Web site
AeroXperience
reports that the next version will be code-named
Office 14. Since Office 2007 was code-named Office 12,
it appears Microsoft has Triskaidekaphobia, fear
of the number 13. AeroXperience, citing internal
Microsoft documentation, says Office 14 focuses on
productivity, communication and collaboration,
enterprise
content management, business process and business
intelligence, manageability and security. Translation:
No details are available. Ship dates for 14 include
first half of 2008 for Beta 1, second half of 2008 for
Beta 2 and first half of 2009 for final shipment.
Microsoft, not surprisingly, denies the validity
of the report and would love to have everyone else do
the same and buy Office 2007 instead.
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