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."