Also on the horizon are special, differentiated versions of the Office desktop suite for certain customer sets, Capossela said. Microsoft already fields a low-cost Student & Teacher edition and Small Business Edition of the Office suite, besides its more horizontal Standard and Professional editions.
Capossela said Microsoft is happy with the trend in Office 2003 sales and deployment over the last 12 months. For the company's last quarter ending 2003, the Information Worker Business Unit--which includes Office--saw its revenue rise 14 percent to $2.56 billion from $2.25 billion a year earlier. That growth, in turn, owed much to a 13 percent growth in volume license and retail sales, as well as a favorable year-ago comparison period.
Yet some partners and customers say Office 2003 rollouts remain a slow go, with many new licenses yet to be deployed. Microsoft executives, including Capossela, say the desktop Office's primary competition are old versions of Office and customer inertia, and that's why the company seeks new features and functions--often delivered from servers to the rich Office client--as a way to drive upgrades and more revenue.
For example, the Office group could take better advantage of other Microsoft technologies such as SQL Server Reporting Services. Reporting Services ship with the SQL Server database and are already available via Project Server, which requires the database, and will likely surface in other Office offerings, Capossela said. Reporting Services let users slice and dice relevant data and format it appropriately. Users already can dump report data into Excel to drill down further.
To drive Office customer satisfaction, Microsoft continues to rely on the Watson feedback tool to delve into the reasons for crashes and other problems, as well as Content Watson, which provides a feedback loop for users to critique the help files and other Office-related content. Updated help files based on that feedback get posted to Microsoft Office Online.
Discover the benefits of scalable backbone and network services for application and cloud providers.
Network automation is gaining momentum. Here's how you can drive this powerful technology to its full potential.
Subsea cable alternatives can provide a level of comfort for those concerned about disruptions. Realistically, they will continue to play a small, but critical role in the short term.
