Vista may be stealing the headlines, but it is its
companion Office 2007 that is attracting the most interest from
corporate IT departments, as Microsoft unveils the two
products.
Possibly the biggest change to Office applications is their
ability to act as the interface to enterprise software from the
likes of SAP and Oracle, as well as Microsoft's own Dynamics
enterprise applications.
The idea of using Office as an interface onto back-end
enterprise systems, such as SAP and Oracle, is already beginning to
find favour among IT chiefs.
One IT director of a global company said, "People are familiar
with the Office interface and they find it difficult to adapt to
interfaces for enterprise resource planning applications. So
integrating ERP or CRM with Office should make it easier for users
and save on training."
But not all IT directors agree that integrating Office into
back-office applications is a good thing. "I see no benefit having
enterprise integration defined by Microsoft - its track record is
not one to be proud of in this area," said one IT manager.
Many users are looking at integrating the Sharepoint 2007
groupware platform into Office 2007 to allow staff to share
information from within Office applications.
Kevin Kincaid, IS development manager at property services firm
Telereal, said that of all the Vista releases "upgrading to Office
2007 is probably the easiest case to make".
"We are in the process of upgrading our Sharepoint 2003-based
intranet/extranet to Sharepoint 2007, and Office 2007 will
complement a lot of the new functionality that results from the
upgrade," he said.
"Office 2007 also removes certain limitations found in the
current version of, for example, Excel. Vista is not as
straightforward while it has a lot of new and enhanced features,
there is no single compelling argument to upgrade right now."
Owen Williams, group head of IT at estate agent Knight Frank,
said, "Microsoft Office 2007 and Windows Sharepoint Services
solutions appear interesting and do form part of our future plans.
But there is not a compelling business reason for us to upgrade to
these versions in the immediate future."
More on Office 2007
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