Ms will be growing a beta examine plan for Place of work Reside Work enviroment

Windows answer to Search engines and other competition within the on the internet app market moved into common toy with assessment with Tuesday.

Microsoft office 2007, any Web-based ext so that you can Office environment of which introduces on line record expressing along with storage devices, has been in a limited, individual try out test out given that very last April.

The particular cost-free services, fixed to come out in the future this year, is actually geared towards Search engine Paperwork as well as Excel spreadsheets, amongst some other expert services, that contain emerged when preferred choices to Office environment.

Though Place of work even now holds a strong direct while in the productivity program market, which includes not necessarily stopped Google, Sun microsystems, Adobe and others from launching new releases. For several customers, individuals companies could be considerably better Office's huge setting up footprint as well as price.

Just one warning by using Microsoft Office Ultimate 2007: no permit consumers for you to alter documents on line, seeing that Google's assistance will. Ms operatives have not eliminated possibly on line touch-ups sometime soon.

For now, customers will certainly nevertheless need a content associated with Place of work to help alter docs, though they are able to use Place of work Are living Work space to evaluate and also touch upon paperwork within a cell phone browser home window, create precisely what Microsof company terms "simple" Website lists in addition to notes, as well as talk about records.

Microsoft explained the particular proceed to preserve and change Company information inside the file format of the opponents

A brand new system simply by Master of science to let its Office 2007 software to conserve plus revise information in a very compete with structure will certainly encounter a probe from the European Commission.

This Commission rate stated past due Thursday that it will research regardless of whether Microsoft's selection to incorporate service for any Amenable Report File format to be able to Office can result in increased purchaser selection.

Microsoft's go, furthermore announced Saturday, is regarded as any concession in order to government bodies concerned with rivalry and to prospects, mostly authorities, concerned about product or service lock-in.

"The Commission rate may take a look at whether or not the declared support with Wide open Report Data format in Office causes improved interoperability along with permits customers to procedure and also change its paperwork with all the program products of the choice," the commission rate said inside of a record documented by simply Dow Smith.

Your Microsoft Office Professional 2007 products administrator instructed CNET Media.net about Wednesday how the business intends to examine the go while using Commission. "We have continuing discussion using the EC, therefore we is going to completely possess a discussion along with them pertaining to these types of ways and obtain whichever comments they will often enhance the idea,Inches explained Tom Robertson, gm connected with Interoperability and Benchmarks in Milliseconds.

Starting off sometime in the primary half of pick up, Office 2007 is going to service ODF as a native formatting alongside Windows unique Business office Available XML. Consumers are able to choose one or even the other for the reason that normal structure.

Regarding roughly 2 yrs, Microsof company creates offered linguists which permit Business office assist ODF files. This company intends to carry on doing of which to get old types associated with Company. Aid intended for ODF, together with the Transportable File Format and the XML Newspaper Spec, will probably be already a part of our next version associated with Office environment, program code referred to as Company 15.

Only about 35% of large companies plan to move to the latest version of Microsoft Office software next year

The Merrill Lynch survey polled CIOs at 75 U.S. companies and 25 European ones on a number of issues, including whether they were "likely to upgrade to Office 2003 in the next year."

A total of 65 percent said "no," a result Merrill Lynch attributed to complex new server-based functions--including capabilities based on Extensible Markup Language (XML)--included in the new version of the productivity software. "Without a new killer app in Office, the upgrade cycle looks to be gradual until new XML-based technologies take hold in the broader market," according to the report.

A Microsoft representative said initial sales of Office 2007 downlaod are in line with expectations and well ahead of early results for the previous version of the software, Office XP.

"Customers should always make sure they see value in their software purchases," the representative said. "Microsoft's job is to show them that value in Office, and that's exactly what we're in the process of doing with the Microsoft Office System. We're confident that as more companies evaluate the Microsoft Office System, they'll see for themselves the value in the investment."

The survey results are in line with predictions accompanying the launch of Microsoft Office 2010 Standard in October, when analysts noted that businesses would need to do significant testing and resource planning before taking advantage of XML functions and other server-based tools.


"You're looking at a much longer sales cycle with all the server functionality," he said. "This is not a department-level purchase decision anymore. You really need to get the CIO involved and design new processes...Even if they really like the product, I can easily imagine them taking six months to a year to build the back end and build the integration support they need."

The Merrill Lynch survey also found that a majority of CIOs--58 percent--responded affirmatively to the question, "Are Microsoft's security issues causing you to seriously consider open-source desktop alternatives?" Microsoft recently acknowledged that security concerns have made businesses reluctant to sign long-term contracts.

Google's online office suite shows promise

Google is betting on a future with ubiquitous, affordable, wireless, high-speed Internet access. That may be smart in the long run, but last week that philosophy drove me straight back into the arms of Microsoft Office Ultimate 2007.

My technology choices generally come down to pragmatic rather than religious choices, and it was pragmatism that led me to embrace Google Docs last year. I like the fact that I can work simultaneously on multiple computers--indeed, even on mobile phones these days--and that multiple people can easily collaborate. My requirements for advanced formatting and formulas are low enough that I generally can put up with the shortcomings.
Here's what I don't like, though: for Google Docs, you need a network connection.

I just spent five days at the Mobile World Congress show in Barcelona, Spain. Contrary to what one might hope for a show devoted to the latest in mobile communications, the wireless networking at the show generally ranged somewhere from crippled to crushed.

For reasons that baffle me, network giant Cisco Systems sponsored the show's Wi-Fi, with signage in the halls touting it and attendees receiving a flier explaining how to use it. I'd have thought that Cisco, a company with a brand to promote and protect, would have learned by now to steer clear of tech trade shows in which auditoriums filled with Net-enabled gadgets bring wireless networks to their knees.

I was eventually hobbled with a Office 2007 download dongle plugged into my computer's USB port, but that only works some of the time (it was too bulky to use the dongle and the other USB port at the same time, for example). And of course the data plan is expensive, I had to unplug it much of the time, and connecting to the network is slow.

Under these circumstances, was I going to rely on a word processor that needed a network connection? Not a chance.

Thus, it was back to Microsoft Word for me during the show.

Who are Microsoft Vista's earliest adopters?

We'll confess: When we heard CompUSA was keeping its stores open until 2 a.m. for the Vista launch this morning, we scoffed. Sure, we reasoned, people will show up at the locations where they're giving away free gadgets and food, and a visit from a pro football player will certainly draw more than your typical techie crowd. But we were convinced that Office 2007 every other store would be filled with the sounds of crickets chirping, accompanied by bored employees drumming their fingers on idle cash registers.

But when we pulled up to the CompUSA in Culver City (Los Angeles) at 11:45 p.m., the parking lot was mostly full, and about 35 customers were inside eyeballing the new Vista machines and other products on sale. Clearly we'd been hasty in our judgment, but the question still remained: A PlayStation 3 is one thing, but who shows up at midnight for an operating system?

"It's not that I was rushing to get it," said Laurence Hilman, an attorney and real estate agent who lives in the area. "I knew I wanted it, and I'm going to be busy in the next few days, so midnight was just a convenient time for me." Hilman, who was wearing a Motorola headset to coordinate with his Rizr phone ("I usually wear the Bluetooth sunglasses--they're a little more comfortable," he said), had one copy each of Vista Business and Vista Ultimate in his cart, along with two copies of Microsoft Office Ultimate 2007.

Microsoft plans to offer a 50 percent discount on the upcoming Mac OS X

But Microsoft did back Mac OS X in other ways, such as shipping a version of Internet Explorer with the operating system's public beta, or test version, in September.

Still, Microsoft's commitment to delivering Office 2007 for OS X is a huge win for Apple, particularly because software developers have not flocked to the new operating system as aggressively as the company had hoped, Technology Business Research analyst Tim Deal said.

"This is a good development for Apple," Deal said. "It certainly helps promote Mac OS X. I believe Apple still needs to get additional developers onboard for Mac OS X to reach the potential they are shooting for."
Becker concurred that Microsoft's full backing for Mac OS X sends an important message.

"We've worked hard to partner with Apple, but the industry looks and asks, 'How does Microsoft view things? If they're on board with OS X, then things must be going well,'" she said. "They look to us as an overall temperature check and gauge."

Regardless, Apple may have delivered a tacit ding Tuesday to Microsoft, its largest software development partner. During his keynote speech at Macworld, Apple chief executive Steve Jobs on several occasions referred to applications appearing in the autumn as "laggards."

Becker defended Microsoft's decision not to release Office for Mac OS X until later in the year.

"Office is a very large set of applications," she said. "There are 25 million lines of code. It's not as easy as saying, 'Hey, we're going to port it over to OS X.' It takes time."

She also emphasized the importance of the project for Microsoft Office Ultimate 2007.

"We're moving on to Mac OS X. It's our No. 1 priority for 2001," Becker said.

Jobs also announced that Mac OS X will go on sale March 24 for $129 and appear on new computers starting in July. The much anticipated, but long-delayed, operating system overhaul is the most significant change to Mac OS since 1984 when Apple released the Macintosh.

In the meantime, Apple on Tuesday released Mac OS 9.1, which added new features designed to ease the transition to the new version.

With the Mac OS X release date firm and no longer "a moving target," other major developers may finally give the operating system the support it needs, said LeTocq, who praised Microsoft's responsiveness.

"For Microsoft to produce a major application like Office six months after code freeze is pretty good timing on their part," he said.

Microsoft eyes new ways to sell Office

Many of those people are in emerging markets, where Microsoft office 2007 is trying things like prepaid cards good for two or three months worth of Office use. But Capossela agreed that there is an opportunity to reach consumers in well-developed markets like the U.S. and Europe as well.

"Office is used by tons of those folks, but it's often old versions of Office," Capossela said, adding that the company is actively trying to see whether different ways of pricing or offering Office might prompt more consumers to use the latest technology.

"Would prepaid cards work in the U.S.?" We don't think so, but those are the types of questions we try to ask ourselves," he said.

One possibility is to introduce some sort of online productivity options as part of the Office Live suite of software. BusinessWeek reported last year that Microsoft was exploring such a move.

Microsoft Office Ultimate 2007 won't say for sure that's where it's headed, though CEO Steve Ballmer did note in his keynote speech on Tuesday that Microsoft would soon rebrand its existing small business Office Live tools as it plans to add services for individuals to the Office Live line.

In its initial incarnation, Office Live has been about making new services available over the Internet, primarily e-mail and Web hosting. But Microsoft has been grappling for some time now about whether to offer more of its consumer software for free, supported by advertising.

An internal Microsoft position paper, as reported by CNET News.com in 2005, made the case for an ad-funded version of Microsoft Works, noting that Microsoft gets only a couple of dollars per new computer that sells with a bundled copy of Works. That revenue could easily be surpassed with an ad-funded version.

While those economics may indeed be true, Capossela pointed out that it's not just about revenue. One of the challenges is whether people really want to see ads when they are in a spreadsheet or word processing program.
"You can't just apply the economics," he said.

And Microsoft may not need to take its entire Office or Works product online. The company has talked broadly about a "software plus services" strategy in which online services are used to augment existing software products. One option that would fit that model might be for Microsoft to offer a "light" version of its productivity tools over the Internet, while relying on the full Office for more advanced document creation.

Microsoft has screwed up yet another standards effort

Arst Design has a probing article on Microsoft's Open Office 2007 standard.' Yeesh. OOXML is even worse than I thought. And to think I wanted to give Microsoft the benefit of a doubt. Fool me once

Microsoft is trying to push new file formats that are using ZIP and XML. Are those new file formats any good for Office developers ? In other words, should anyone feel safe to make direct access to file parts, and start getting free of running instances of Microsoft Office Ultimate 2007 and its COM object model, usually through VBA?

They insist on the fact that, provided you make a valid use of the XML, pretty much changing the content of anything in an existing document can be achieved by sequentially 1) unzipping the content 2) making appropriate changes to one or more XML parts that are compatible with the provided XML schemas and open packaging relationships 3) zipping the content back.

Unfortunately, Microsoft doth insist too much, as the article points out. The OOXML spec churns out broken code. Try again, Redmond.

Microsoft preps new Office 11 beta

The initial test release of Office 11--the code name for the product--was shipped to about 12,000 testers in October. In a familiar pattern, the software titan is expected to make this second testing version more widely available. Microsoft has taken a similar approach with past upgrades to Office and its Windows operating system.

Office 11 Beta 2 will be geared more toward enterprise customers, said Microsoft executives.

This new version of Microsoft's cash cow comes as analysts question how well the software will be received by customers. While Office still controls more than 90 percent of the desktop office market, customers say they see fewer new features that would compel them to upgrade to the latest versions.

Some customers have even investigated lower cost alternatives. Although a new licensing plan will help keep customers in the Microsoft office 2007 fold, any slump in sales could make a big impact on the software maker's balance sheet. Office contributes nearly one-third of Microsoft's overall revenue.

With Office 11, Microsoft's new strategy is to focus more on features targeted at businesses, as the company tries to expand its reach into larger customer relationship management (CRM) and enterprise resource planning (ERP) applications to complement its broader product lines.

The new Office 11 Beta 2 is expected to include two new Office products, OneNote, a new note-taking application, and InfoPath, a tool for building and sharing Extensible Markup Language (XML)-based forms.

Only a small number of testers were given InfoPath, formerly code-named XDocs, with Beta 1. Microsoft has not finalized bundling plans for OneNote or InfoPath, which could ship separately from the main Office package.
Like Beta 1, the new testing version is expected to include the Access database, Excel spreadsheet, FrontPage Web site creation and management software, Outlook e-mail, contact and calendaring application, Publisher content creation package, PowerPoint presentation creator and a word processor.

Testers will be able to take advantage of new digital ink capabilities that allow users to write on screens using a penlike device. The support is available in portables running Windows XP Tablet PC Edition.

For enterprise customers, the most valuable part of Office 11 may be support for XML, a crucial technology for delivering Web-based services and for linking applications. But it is uncertain whether Microsoft will do anything in Office 11 Beta 2 to open proprietary schemas, or XML dialects, that could restrict how enterprises make use of the technology. Major applications Word and Excel would be able to save documents in XML as well as Microsoft's .doc format. InfoPath will widely use XML to extract data from Office files into formlike documents.

"InfoPath is part of the XML revolution that is being reflected across all Microsoft products," Microsoft Office Ultimate 2007 Chairman Bill Gates said on Tuesday during a speech given at the company's Most Valued Professional Summit held at its headquarters. "But in order for the XML revolution to happen, one piece of it has to be rich viewing: The ability to create rich schemas and have right user interaction with XML documents; and that's InfoPath. Being part of the offering really provides that critical piece."

Office may be decreased by 95-85% market share

Smith said that Microsoft's increase in volume licensing fees--more than 100 percent for some companies--directly accounts for much of the interest in StarOffice among Microsoft's Office customer base. The increases will come through a new licensing program called Software Assurance that will commit customers to buying operating system and application upgrades for an annual fee.

"Some of these (StarOffice) pilots are in place to get Microsoft to back down on the licensing changes," Smith said. "We think the interest is serious enough that if Microsoft doesn't change its pricing and licensing strategy, it will lose 10 percent of the Office 2007 downlaod  market to StarOffice and alternatives in a couple years...by 2004."

Such a shift, while seemingly dramatic, wouldn't do much to dent Microsoft's dominance in the office productivity market. Smith estimated that Office could drop from 95 percent to 85 percent share--"and that's certainly not going to break the company. Nonetheless, they're very concerned about StarOffice in Redmond."

Office accounts for more than one-third of Microsoft's overall revenue.
The tug-of-war between Microsoft and corporate customers over volume licensing is also an attempt by Microsoft to lock subscribers into contracts that will make them less likely to switch to competing products.

"Locking companies into contracts so they won't consider anything else is exactly what Microsoft is trying to do," Smith said. "They will make sure (customers) don't deploy any other software and help protect the market share."

Companies considering a switch to StarOffice or a competing product won't find the move cheap. Gartner estimates that the average cost per user would be about $1,200, which works out to about $800 for labor and $400 for productivity. In contrast, companies upgrading to Office every two years would spend about $550 per user, or $700 every four years. That means many businesses would take eight years to recover their initial investment.

There are also unseen productivity costs that could arise because of file format incompatibilities with Office.

"Whenever you put StarOffice on the desktop, you're taking a risk," Smith said. "You're moving to something that's not tried and supported...There's no guarantee that file compatibility won't be a problem."

Another issue affecting companies' buying decisions may be the new Web subscription feature being added to Office. Those services will be available as part of Microsoft's new volume-licensing program, which may add incentive for companies to stick with Office.

"If you buy Software Assurance today, you have the right for the next three years to whatever comes out," said Rebecca LaBrunerie, Microsoft Office Ultimate 2007 product manager for worldwide licensing and pricing. "We've said that .Net is coming out and that future versions of our products over the next decade are going to be software services. There's going to be more frequent upgrades with this concept of Web services."

Microsoft's next version of Office to provide further details

The software maker also offered pricing details for some, though not all, of the new products. In general, Microsoft office 2007 both businesses and consumers should expect to pay about the same for the new Office as they have paid for past versions.

"We do not expect our customers to notice any significant change in our pricing," said Parri Munsell, a group program manager in Microsoft's information worker unit. Office Standard, for example, will sell for $399, while Office Professional will sell for $499. Also, as widely expected, the version formerly code-named "Office 12" will be known as Office 2007 when it ships in the second half of this year.

Munsell said the new Office will offer a bevy of new features, including an all-new user interface and new XML-based file formats.

"There's a tremendous amount in the new Office 2007," he said. "We do believe this is the most significant advance in over a decade."
Microsoft released an initial beta of Office 2007 in November, with a second beta planned for this spring.

In the biggest change for consumers, Microsoft is replacing its Student and Teacher edition with a $149 Home and Student edition that can be used by all home users. Microsoft is also removing the Outlook e-mail and calendar program from that edition and instead is including its OneNote note-taking application. As with the Student and Teacher edition, the home version of Office can be used on up to three PCs in a home, but cannot be upgraded to a future version of Office.

On the business side, Microsoft Office Ultimate 2007 is offering two high-end collections in addition to its professional and standard editions, in keeping with CEO Steve Ballmer's statement to analysts last year that there would be new premium versions of Office.

The "professional plus" and "enterprise" editions can only be purchased by businesses through Microsoft's volume-licensing program, and Microsoft did not detail the cost for those options. With the Professional Plus version, the standard Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook applications are augmented with the Access and Publisher products that come with the professional edition, the Office Communicator instant messaging program, InfoPath form-creation software, and server-based content management and forms management capabilities.

The enterprise version adds Groove, the collaboration program--developed by Ray Ozzie--that Microsoft acquired last year. Users who get the Groove desktop software have the choice of running their own Groove server or subscribing to a hosted service. For small businesses and others, Microsoft is also offering a Groove Live service for a $79 annual subscription per user.

Microsoft has also been showing off new server-based abilities for Office, but had not detailed how those would be made available. Many of the new capabilities will be included in SharePoint Portal Server, which has been expanded from a tool for handling portals to one that also handles other Office tasks, including forms management, spreadsheet hosting and content rights management.

"We think Office SharePoint is going to be the heart of the Office system," Munsell said. For those who don't want the full abilities of SharePoint, Microsoft also plans a server program aimed solely at forms hosting and management.

As it does with other server-based programs, Microsoft is requiring customers to also purchase a license for each PC that accesses the new Office servers. Microsoft is offering two bundles of those so-called client access licenses (CALs). The "Core CAL" combines licenses for Windows Server operating system, Exchange Server, Office SharePoint Portal Server and Systems Management Server. The new "Enterprise CAL" includes those licenses, as well as Microsoft Operations Manager, Microsoft Office Live Communications Server as well as rights-management and security products.

Microsoft is also using the SharePoint brand for a new Web site-development program. Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer 2007, like Microsoft's Expression Web Designer software is based in part on its current FrontPage web-authoring tool, though that program is being phased out. Microsoft said it will sell the SharePoint Web design program for $299, while pricing and availability for Expression will be announced "in the near future."

Although both programs are based on FrontPage, Microsoft said that they serve different audiences. Expressions is more for professional Web designers building standards-based sites, while SharePoint is aimed more at typical cubicle dwellers looking to post information on internal Web sites and automate business processes.

Microsoft said the repair of the collection of errors and performance is impossible to drive sales significantly improve

Service Pack 1 (SP1) for Office 2007 download is available for download from Microsoft's Office Update site. The package contains a series of bug fixes and stability improvements for the main Office 2007 package--a collection of productivity tools such as the Word word processor and Outlook e-mail client--plus more sweeping changes and new applications.

SP1 releases are traditionally considered major benchmarks for Microsoft applications, with the many IT managers waiting until the release of the first bug fix roundup before they install a new application.

That's unlikely to happen with Office 2007, however, said Paul De Groot, an analyst for research firm Directions on Microsoft. A relative paucity of major bugs in Office 2003 has encouraged IT folks interested in upgrading to do so promptly, as evidenced by Microsoft's quarterly earnings report last week showing a significant jump in revenue for the Office division. "It does not appear to have been a terribly problematic release," De Groot said.

Businesses holding off on Office 2007, however, may be doing so because they need more time to test and plan for implementation, De Groot said. Enhancements in the new release are focused on under-the-hood improvements such as XML functions and digital rights management, capabilities that require significant and sometimes problematic integration with other IT systems.

"There's a fair amount of work for any company that really wants to leverage all the new capabilities of Office 2007," De Groot said. "There's a great deal of developer work that needs to take place...Any organization that saw something significant in 2007 was probably looking at integration with other systems, and they may still need time to evaluate."

The most obvious changes in SP1 are related to the InfoPath electronic forms product and the OneNote notetaking application. Based on user feedback and product testing, Microsoft Office Ultimate 2007 has made significant changes to the way those applications look and work.

Tweaks for core Office applications such as Word and Excel are more under the hood and focus on improving stability and performance, said Jeanne Sheldon, director of Office management and updating services.

"With the core applications, customers have become very accustomed to working with them in certain ways," Sheldon said. "We don't want to make changes in an interim release that are disruptive for the customer."
Instead, Microsoft engineers combed through thousands of reports generated by Microsoft's Watson and other error-reporting tools to pinpoint what was making applications crash or perform erratically.

"We've really worked through the information we get back from the customer experience program," Sheldon said. "We can categorize the reports based on the particular components involved and the line of code that's failing--and go straight for the significant hitters...We were able to increase the reliability of the product across a number of different measures about sevenfold."

Microsoft warns of Office-related malware

Microsoft's Malware Protection Center issued a warning this week that it has spotted malicious code on the Internet that can take advantage of a flaw in Word and infect computers after a user does nothing more than read an e-mail.

The flaw was addressed in November in a fix issued on Patch Tuesday, but with malicious code now spotted in the wild, the protection center apparently wants to be sure the update wasn't overlooked.

Symantec underlined the seriousness of the flaw to CNET's Elinor Mills in

"One of Microsoft Office Uleimate 2007 the most dangerous aspects of this vulnerability is that a user doesn't have to open a malicious e-mail to be infected," Joshua Talbot, security intelligence manager at Symantec Security Response, said at the time. "All that is required is for the content of the e-mail to appear in Outlook's Reading Pane. If a user highlights a malicious e-mail to preview it in the Reading Pane, their machine is immediately infected. The same holds true if a user opens Outlook and a malicious e-mail is the most recently received in their in-box; that e-mail will appear in the Reading Pane by default and the computer will be infected."

Users of  Office 2007 should be sure to install the fix. You can use your Start menu to check for updates: Click the Start button, click All Programs, and then click Windows Update. Details of the MS10-087 update, including which software versions are affected, can be found here.

A detailed plan in Microsoft Office applications

The initiative, called Office 2007 Business Applications, is meant to encourage third-party application providers to write code that will integrate closely with Microsoft Office applications. The company discussed the effort at its TechEd customer conference here.

Microsoft and SAP have a joint development project, called Duet, which makes Office the access point to SAP data and business process. For example, a person could send out an offer letter for employment from Word and draw information from a specialized human resources application.

With Office Business Applications, Microsoft intends to get more software companies and corporate developers to do similar work, executives said.

"Office Business Applications are a new breed of applications we think with (Office System) 2007 people will be able to build in earnest," said Chris Capossela, corporate vice president of Microsoft's information worker product management group.

Office System 2007, which is due early next year, will include a set of common services which will have published technical interfaces.

Those services include work flow, search, a business data catalog, user interface components, security and the Office Open XML file formats.

Microsoft also detailed a toolkit called Lobi (line-of-business interoperability) for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server, which is designed to simplify the building of transactional business applications with Office and the SharePoint portal server. A technical preview will be available at the end of 2006 and generally available next year, executives said.

"The whole goal of Lobi is to deliver line-of-business (application) data and business processes right into the Office clients," Capossela said.
Separately, the software giant said enterprise resource planning application suite Microsoft Dynamics AX 4.0 has been released to manufacturing, which means that the product will be available soon.

Company executives said the updated application suite is integrated with Microsoft's SharePoint portal server and the reporting services in SQL Server 2005. The supply chain application can also collect and monitor RFID information.

Over time, Microsoft intends to create closer integration with Office applications, such as Outlook, executives said.

"We think this will go a long way to boosting up the percentage of people (who) actually use the system to above 15 percent, as it is now," said James Utzschneider, general manager for Microsoft Dynamics marketing.

Other planned enhancements include the ability to use Visual Studio to integrate Microsoft Office Ultimate 2007  Dynamics with other applications using Web services protocols, executives said.

The Microsoft Office 2010 beta was released

The Office 2010 Technical Preview introduced the Back Stage view, an enhanced File menu (accessed from the Office Icon tab) that lets you manage your documents, set permissions, and share your projects with colleagues. In the beta version Microsoft office 2007 has decided to return to calling it the File menu, but with all the functionality and flexibility of Back Stage. They also have made it possible to access all the other tabs in the Ribbon, which were previously inaccessible in the Technical Preview, so you can get to the information you want quickly without the added step of exiting Back Stage.

The Microsoft Office Ultimate 2007  beta was released Wednesday, and though there aren't many major changes from the Technical Preview from July, there are some new features and enhancements worthy of note. This post will focus on the changes to the beta, but if you want a larger overview of new features across all the applications, check out our rundown of the Microsoft Office 2010 Technical Preview.

Outlook is the cornerstone of many companies' communications and daily schedules, and as such received a lot of enhancements in Office 2010. In the beta version, Microsoft has added even more ways to connect with coworkers and contacts. The new Outlook Social Connector is an added information pane that gives you more info about everyday contacts. Once set up, you'll be able to view pictures of contacts (even in large cc lists), previous conversations, attachments shared, meetings attended, and much more. Though not complete in the beta, Microsoft says the Outlook Social Connector will soon be able to connect with social Web sites like Facebook and Twitter, so you can follow status updates and more all in one location.

Microsoft finalizes Office 2010

Microsoft said Friday that it has wrapped up development work on the next version of the Office family, including Microsoft office 2007, SharePoint 2010, Visio 2010, and Project 2010.

The products were "released to manufacturing," which is the final engineering step. The products are slated to be available for businesses next month and Microsoft is holding a launch event on May 12 in New York.

"RTM is the final engineering milestone of a product release and our engineering team has poured their heart and soul into reaching this milestone," vice president Takeshi Numoto said in a blog posting. "It is also an appropriate time to re-emphasize our sincere gratitude to the more than 5,000 organizations and partners who have worked with us on rapid deployment and testing of the products."

The Office suite, in all its many flavors, will hit store shelves in June and Microsoft is planning a separate Gotham event to mark that occasion. Microsoft is also taking preorders for Office on its online store. Already Microsoft has been promising those buying Office 2007 a free upgrade to Office 2010.

Redmond is also planning to allow PC makers to load a slimmed down Office Starter that users will get for free on new computers.

Among the biggest changes in the new version of Office is the fact that Microsoft will release separate browser-based versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote. Businesses will be able to host the Office Web Apps on a SharePoint server, while consumers will be able to get free access as part of Windows Live.

On the desktop side, Microsoft is adding the first 64-bit version of Office as well as other changes including video editing in PowerPoint, photo editing in Word, and an improved "paste preview" function.

Microsoft Office Ultimate 2007 noted Friday that more than 7.5 million people have been using the beta version of Office 2010.

Microsoft Office again with Lotus Symphony

The computing giant, which has been challenging Microsoft's desktop dominance for years, said that Lotus Symphony is a standards-based alternative to Microsoft's proprietary Office.

Separately, on Monday afternoon, Yahoo said that it paid $350 million to acquire Zimbra, a start-up that developed a Web-based e-mail and collaboration package comparable with Microsoft office 2007  and Outlook.

Meanwhile, Google on Monday introduced Google Presentations, an online version of Microsoft's PowerPoint presentation application that complements Google's Web-hosted document editor and spreadsheet.

The flurry of investment in productivity software points to technology and business changes in the IT industry that are making Microsoft's cash cow vulnerable to alternatives, particularly among small businesses and consumers.

But don't expect Microsoft coffers to start draining tomorrow. Analysts expect Microsoft to retain the great majority of its Office customers as it adjusts its product development to the Web and open source, even as competitors try to siphon off its Office revenue.

"I think there's some blood in the water between Microsoft not getting its Open XML (Office document formats) fast-track standards approval and the European Commission ruling," said Michael Silver, an analyst at Gartner, referring to two recent Microsoft setbacks.

Microsoft failed to get its Office Open XML formats certified as ISO standards through its accelerated process earlier this month. On Monday, the European Commission ruled in favor of regulators in an antitrust case that could change how Microsoft does business in Europe.
Microsoft has shown some signs of reacting to the full-court press it's seeing from competitors.

Last week, it made a version of its Office suite available to students for $60. It is also developing Office Live, a set of online services that complements Office and is aimed at small businesses.

A Microsoft spokesman on Tuesday said that Office meets its customers' needs because the company continues to invest in it.

"Competition is good for the industry and good for customers. That said, Microsoft Office 2010 Professional continues to be the overwhelming choice for a broad range of organizations and individuals," said Jacob Jaffe, director of Office at Microsoft. "Microsoft Office has changed as people's work has changed, and the alternatives for the most part have aimed to meet the needs of the past."

IBM on Tuesday offered up beta versions of the Lotus Symphony applications--a document editor, spreadsheet and presentation program--to end users and business customers for free download.

The applications run on Windows and Linux, and a Mac version is planned.
IBM executives said that the company's backing of OpenOffice-based software and the open-source project is similar to its decision in the 1990s to push Linux into businesses.

Microsoft Office Live is Microsoft trying to create a low-cost point

Microsoft office 2007 Live is Microsoft's attempt at creating a low-cost a la carte alternative to some of the small business software solutions that's available--including their own. It's designed to get a small business on the Web--both publicly, with a Web site, and privately, for collaboration and back-office work. Businesses get their own domain, e-mail, shared workspaces, Web site, and a contact manager tool.

Microsoft offers three tiers of Office Live service. One is free, with the other two being paid premium versions that throw in more shared storage space, e-mail addresses, and more back-office tools, such as a project management application and a time manager.

The good: Previously hard-to-find features now easier to explore; Word embraces basic desktop publishing tools; Excel formulas are easier to reference; PowerPoint presentations are more attractive; Outlook improves task and time management; improved integration throughout the applications; smaller application and file sizes; new file formats are easier to salvage if corrupted; document security is more straightforward.

The bad: Drastic design changes demand a steep learning curve if you're upgrading; new interface isn't always intuitive; contextual tabs and style galleries can be distracting; users of Office 2000 through 2003 must install converters to open Office 2007 files; no easy way to save work to the Web.
T
he bottom line: Overall, Microsoft Office Standard 2007 is a worthy upgrade if you need to make sleeker-looking documents and presentations to share with others, and Outlook is better than ever, but you can stick to your current software if you don't feel that it lacks anything.

The ambitious, ground-up rebuild of Microsoft Office 2010 Professional presents drastically different interfaces and new file formats. The new Office looks so unlike its predecessors, it's likely to spark intense love-hate responses from users.

Microsoft in not all cloud developers are looking for the same customer

While Microsoft office 2010 is directly targeting developers, who might service enterprises or SMBs, Fujitsu has its eye directly on the enterprise market.

Each company must negotiate with Fujitsu for the service. "It's very much an enterprise market and it's not a price-book type advertisement we're going for."

Other companies providing similar cloud products hosted in Australian datacentres are Melbourne IT (its product, based on VMware's vCloud Express, is still in beta), Ultra Serve-subsidiary Rejila and Canberra-based Cloud Central. They all provide their pricing upfront, which Fujitsu said shows that they are after smaller companies.

We see it as a different market because your sign-up method is through credit card. The customers that we'll bring on with [our offering] will be customers who are verified by Fujitsu and then come into an enterprise-ready cloud," McNaught says. His definition of enterprise-ready is having high availability, security and dual datacentres providing the service. office 2007 download cloud availability is advertised as 99.999 per cent.

Yet Fujitsu's model didn't impress Cloud Central's founder Kristoffer Sheather. "I think that model's old-fashioned really. The new way of doing things is low friction. The pricing's out in the open. Everyone knows what everyone else is getting and you can actually sign up to the services very rapidly. Cloud should be about getting on board rapidly. If you have to go through a negotiation process that sort of takes the nature of cloud away. I'd sort of question how cloudy that really is," he says.

Cloud Central's uptime is 99.9 per cent, although customers can negotiate higher availability. Sheather's customers are small- and medium-size enterprises at this point. He is also looking to expand into local government.

Microsoft stopped Office Genuine Advantage plans to relax the piracy restrictions

Office Genuine Advantage (Office 2010  Genuine Advantage OGA) and the Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA) program, Microsoft reduce piracy as an integral part of the Office Genuine Advantage software is mainly used to confirm whether the copy of Office installed on your computer is genuine, If it is not genuine, the software will alert the user on a regular basis.


Last weekend, Microsoft has updated the Knowledge Base article KB949810 for Office Genuine Advantage validation program, and announced that it will stop the program.OGA genuine validation Office users can get the Microsoft Office software updates and other services, stop the Office Genuine Advantage program means that all future versions of Office can download the update provided by Microsoft, whether it is genuine or pirated.

Prior to this, if the user wants to download the Office plug-ins or templates, you must first verified to confirm their installed copy of Office is genuine. Today, the verification step no longer exists.
Microsoft Support Knowledge Base, an article number 917 999 at December 17, 2010 updated, contains the following: "Note: Office Genuine Advantage (OGA) has been terminated. To learn more information about the benefits of genuine Office , please visit the following page: Benefits, of genuine Office. "


Currently, if Microsoft's search engine will be (Bing) search for "validate Office (verification office)", will see a lot of dead links. The search results page is called "Why do we need to verify the office?" The page, but if you click on the link, the user will be directed to the home page of the Microsoft Windows.


In addition, Microsoft Genuine Software page a week ago with the current page relative, you can see has been greatly changed. The previous page contains about 20 links to a separate page; the current page only, including Windows 7 Ultimate and Office 2010 Professional version of the image links, and two "to understand the detailed information about genuine Windows / Office" link.


At present, click on the "Verifying the office 2007 download button in the Microsoft Genuine Software Initiative page will jump to the Windows home page. There is also news that the ActiveX Control Office Notifier is responsible for the IE browser, and Firefox plug-in does not require authentication.


Windows authentication is not affected. Microsoft Security Essentials, Microsoft's free anti-virus software need to verify before download.

The Office has been extended to the global use of

Recently, the Office 2010 is increasingly becoming a common solution, the demand for a simple method of deployment and use has also increased. To meet this demand, each Office2000 application provides a single global executable program, it can easily adapt to the local or regional needs.

1) generic interface. The administrator can change the language of the user interface, without affecting the operation of the application. Users can use multiple languages​​, type in the entire document without the need to change the interface language.

2) support the euro currency unit. In Office2000, Excel, support for the new "Euro" currency units (including symbols and three-letter ISO code).

3) the global thesaurus. The Word2000 provide and improve the "thesaurus" application programming interface (API), to encourage third-party vendors to provide solutions. Word2000 to "multi-language editor allows a single document that contains multiple languages​​. "Language auto-detection feature user types, automatically detect the language, so that it can intelligently apply the right resources in the Microsoft Proofing Tools package.

4) MS-IME20008 on. The office 2007 download an application to support the new version of the "Input Method Editor", the MS-IME20008. Also to support KoreanIME, including automatic detection of Korean or English text input.

Different Office2000 application support IME function in various ways, including restitution, key mapped consultation, mode deviate from, IMEShare drawing support, UNICODEIMM and activities of the keyboard IME code.

Microsoft Office 2010 Students special permit

Student Edition is concrete, it provides for commercial purposes, as a professional the same set of procedures and functions, but the price is much lower. The package includes Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote when, Outlook, Publisher, and access, of course, the latest version.

Permit the purchase of non-resident students and distance higher education in these institutions, college of extended learning, and teaching. The license is boxed, which means that you get physical on the DVD installation files. In addition to these packages,see the PIN you enter here. You will then be prompted to enter your Windows Live ID, or a new, if you do not have it.

Verify student status, ISIC card, enter the school's e-mail address or contact Microsoft office 2010 Customer Support, and answered a few questions. Once your identity has been confirmed, you will get a unique product key, you specify during the installation process.

The advantage is that the license is two computers or other devices, plus it is portable(ie it will remove the old equipment and installation of new) and for non-commercialpurposes, the loss of student status, you can. You can get a set in March, priced atabout 2 300 - CZK including VAT. More information can be found here.

By the end of March, then you can use the portal initial concessions ISICpoint.cz in, this will be the primary and secondary school students will still be available (limited) office 2007 download Home and Student.

Microsoft Word in particular underwent a few changes

There is also an emphasis on cloud integration throughout the newest Office line. When a user signs in, they are automatically signed in with a Microsoft ID and can access and manage connected services. For example, Thurrott reported that he was connected to Flickr, My Office 2010 , SkyDrive, Windows Live Hotmail and Windows Live Messenger.

The program that's being tested right now is only available to a select group of beta testers under a non-disclosure agreement. Microsoft didn't officially divulge much information about the product to the public, but it's called Office 15 its most ambitious undertaking yet in the Office line. It's also promised a more complete product will be made available for the public this summer.

The company didn't return our requests for further comment.

Taking on Competitors

office 2007 download has the ability to integrate via the cloud, but the upcoming product will represent the first time that all Microsoft's cloud services, servers and clients from mobile and PC, Office 365, SharePoint, Lync, Project and Visio will be simultaneously updated in the cloud.

The company made this a central point in Office 15 by adding icons for Microsoft's SkyDrive and other Web locations when a user is saving files and by making it possible to connect to other services via the Office products.

"If there's a problem Microsoft has, it's relevancy, and it's losing relevancy," Larry Walsh, president of the 2112 Group, told TechNewsWorld.

Some of its competitors, such as Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) Docs, offer no-cost or lower-cost options to file, share and store documents. Microsoft has to remind users that it's still the leader in office-related services, said Michael Silver, research vice president and analyst at Gartner (NYSE: IT).

"It's hard to say on the office front that they're losing a ton of customers, but they have lost a lot of business to competitors, and there are definitely threats out there," he told TechNewsWorld. "The biggest one is probably Google."

In addition to relying on changes to cloud integration, one way for Microsoft to keep itself relevant is to get a piece of the app market now, said Silver.