The forthcoming Office 2007 suite marks a major play by
Microsoft into enterprise applications.
The suite will incorporate enterprise-class business
intelligence, business process management, enterprise application
integration and advanced collaboration.
Most Office users would be wise to evaluate Office 2007 beta
versions now because of the time it will take to plan and carry out
a migration. However, analysts have warned that true
interoperability may remain problematic unless the business deploys
a complete Microsoft application stack.
Clive Longbottom, service director at analyst firm Quocirca,
said many organisations would find it worthwhile to upgrade their
Microsoft software across the board.
"There are a lot of changes coming through from Microsoft -
Windows Server, Windows Desktop, Exchange, Live Communication
Server, Sharepoint, SQL Server, Office - the list goes on. At some
stage, the total offering makes sense. And if you are doing an
infrastructure or total desktop upgrade, it makes sense to roll out
Office at the same time," Longbottom said.
One major feature of Office 2007 is that it allows its component
applications, such as Excel and Outlook, to be integrated into
enterprise applications such as SAP.
This means that users may not have to run specialised
applications to perform these integration tasks, and that they can
expose third-party business processes through the familiar Office
interface.
"For example, Excel and Access now come with pretty decent
reporting tools. By making Excel the front-end to an enterprise
system, your total workforce can report on what is happening, and
so make better-informed decisions. The cost of doing this through
implementing Crystal Reports, SAS or whatever, is prohibitive,"
Longbottom said.
Microsoft's application integration strategy comes under the
banner of Office Business Application services. This is designed to
create technologies to support new enterprise functions such as
workflow, enterprise search, XML file formats, better security, and
a new extensible user interface.
Office Business Application allows Office client and server
products - as well as products from independent software providers
- to support business intelligence, communications and
collaboration, and enterprise content management for enterprises,
said AMR research director Jim Murphy.
As part of the Office Business Application initiative, Microsoft
and SAP have produced their Duet (formerly Mendocino) products.
Duet allows Office users to access vertical SAP processes from
within Outlook and other applications.
Also part of the Office Business Application strategy is
line-of-business interoperability for Microsoft Office Sharepoint
Server. This allows Office to cover additional enterprise software
areas, and is a separate initiative from Duet.
"Duet is an early example of the type of capability
line-of-business interoperability intends to offer, only just for
SAP. At this point, it is hard to tell how line-of-business
interoperability will be packaged and sold, but Microsoft promises
a technical preview by the end of 2006," said Murphy.
Line-of-business interoperability enables better collaboration
and communications, and manages documents, web content, records and
forms.
It also allows Office to carry out navigation, search and
retrieval, and furnish more mature business intelligence, including
report and analysis publishing, and eventually interactive
analysis.
Line-of-business interoperability also opens the door to
business process management - termed "workflow" by Microsoft -
using a combination of Microsoft technologies such as Biztalk,
Exchange/Outlook, Visual Studio, and the new Windows Workflow
Foundation.
"Microsoft is clarifying Office's intended role as a platform
for building and extending business applications, largely using
Office's near-ubiquity to make vital business processes more
relevant and accessible to more people," Murphy said.
However, he warned, "Although the entire Office 2007 suite may
seem like the Swiss Army knife of the enterprise IT world, do not
mistake it for Switzerland - it is not neutral in the sense of
completely open integration with other enterprise suppliers.
"While better XML support and other factors make it more open
than ever before, the easiest integration, the slickest features
and arguably the highest level of value will come to those who
adopt the whole Microsoft stack, including Office 2007 and
Vista.
"Let's not mistake the motivations: Microsoft wants you to
upgrade, and quickly."
So what are the considerations for IT managers preparing to
upgrade to Office 2007?
Dale Vile, research director at analyst firm Freeform Dynamics,
said, "What Office 2007 brings may not be attractive to everyone,
but there is a lot of potential business value in there. The only
way you can make a judgment, and test the business case for early
migration, is if you understand what is on offer and how it might
fit with the way your business and end-user expectations are
evolving.
Once the IT director has determined which Office 2007 features
and functionality are relevant to the business, they must then
understand the upgrades or new components required to enable them,
particularly on the server side. "Only then can you put together a
robust migration plan that is properly aligned with business
objectives," said Vile.
"You should revisit all of those grand plans you had for that
enterprise portal project a few years ago that was never quite
delivered, and look at applications that were destined to be
embedded in that. The fact is that the centre of most people's
desktop is Microsoft Office, not their web browser, so surfacing
applications in Office fits much more naturally with user
behaviour."
With so much going on, Office 2007 is not simply another
upgrade. IT directors need to assess what features of Office they
would like to deploy and how those features integrate into the
company's existing IT.
Darren Strange, senior product manager for the Microsoft Office
2007 system, said companies should prepare for Office 2007 now by
testing the beta code which became available at the end of May.
"If you look at the cycles of how long it takes to plan and
implement, it can take more than a year, so it is wise to start
now," he said.
Strange said organisations would typically spend two to three
months evaluating the business case for features such as enterprise
content management, business intelligence, communications and
collaboration, and new aspects of enterprise project
management.
Next is an initial planning phase of a couple of months, centred
on how to deploy the technology.
Then comes four to six months of testing the applications.
Depending on the level of the infrastructure, this could stretch to
a further six months, Strange said.
He added that some new features would also require a cultural
change - for example, in moving from Outlook e-mail to Teamsite and
Sharepoint Portal-based collaboration.
Strange said Microsoft had been working hard to prepare
migration tools and documents to help IT managers with their Office
upgrades. "Typically in the past, some of the deployment tools have
come out afterwards, but this time we have been very careful to
release these alongside the beta," he said.
Some of the new programs help users deploy Office. "We have
changed the file format for Office documents, and have provided
tools to think about the issues around that, though not necessarily
to migrate all your documents to the new file format, though it is
smaller, more secure, and all XML," Strange said.
For example, an Office Migration Planning Manager executable
surveys the Microsoft documents on an organisation's desktops and
reports to a central server, using colour-coding to highlight
particular issues. IT managers can use the results of that survey
to run the File Conversion tool.
Another tool is Local Installation Source, which uses the
Windows Background Intelligent Transfer Service to "drizzle" code
onto desktops over a network over a long period - possibly
months.
A gradual roll-out enables the IT department to prepare desktops
for the upgrade by delivering new Office applications and features
incrementally before going live en masse. "At a certain moment,
Office components can be invoked to install. Administrators have a
lot more control over when the upgrade takes place," said
Strange.
Although Microsoft has made efforts to ease the process of
upgrading to Office 2007, IT user group the Corporate IT Forum said
few of its member organisations plan to make the move to Vista, and
by inference Office 2007, as quickly as Microsoft would like.
It said, "Many organisations are only now migrating fully to
Windows XP. As far as most of those with large PC estates are
concerned, the technology needs to be established, stable and
probably have at least the first service pack available and
deployable.
"We expect that during 2007 organisations will observe this
technology closely and have pilot implementations under evaluation.
We would be surprised if many large organisations were migrating
before 2009."
The move to Office 2007 is far more than a point release
upgrade; it is a move to a whole new business applications
platform. With this in mind, each organisation must decide for
itself whether it needs the new features, and whether it is willing
to change its business, IT and cultural practices to adopt the
platform.
What's new in Microsoft Office 2007?
Office Business Application services
These technologies enable workflow, collaboration, enterprise
navigation, search and retrieval, XML file formats, security, and a
new extensible user interface.
Line-of-business interoperability
Office Business Application services are central to Microsoft’s
line-of-business interoperability initiative, which allows users to
extend SAP and other enterprise software systems.
Third-party extensibility
Office Business Application services enable Office client and
server products, along with third-party applications, to provide
business intelligence, communications and collaboration, and
enterprise content management.
Initiatives such as Duet
Formerly called Mendocino, these packaged applications allow SAP
processes to be accessed via Microsoft Office 2007.
Business process management
This can be achieved through Biztalk, Exchange/Outlook, Visual
Studio, and Windows Workflow Foundation.
The Ribbon
The traditional menus and toolbars have been replaced by the Ribbon
–a new device that presents commands organised into a set of tabs.
The tabs on the Ribbon display the commands that are most relevant
for each of the task areas in Word, Powerpoint, Excel, or
Access.
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