July 15, 2003
Office 2003 / XML
With Office 2003, Microsoft’s strategic direction for the suite has changed. Microsoft has moved away from adding “kitchen sink” features to Office and instead is focusing on connecting Office 2003 to other forms of data and applications through support of the XML format, Ken Smiley, director at Forrester Research, told NewsFactor. The upgrade is the first incremental step in turning Office from a set of individual desktop applications to a portal for Web services within the enterprise, Smiley said.
Office 2003 will enable enterprises to take data from backend systems and instead of trying to access it through a browser bring it directly into applications such as Word and Excel, manipulate that data, and save it in a format understandable to the backend system. “The XML data source will reside on the backend server and be subject to Web services calls,” Smiley said.
Posted by mbolas at July 15, 2003 03:23 PMComments
I think Microsoft's strategic direction lies not with "kitchen sink" features, but with its user/data lock-in strategies. And although I think they realize the winds are changing, it'll take more than one release for the leopard to change its spots.
A few points: Microsoft hasn't been working with the rest of the OASIS TC in defining an open spec (not a huge deal if everything's transformable, just a pain), Powerpoint has no XML functionality at all right now (compare to Keynote), whether all layout information will be exported (for true application interchangability) is still up in the air, and InfoPath (XForms analogue) is completely proprietary.
Simon St. Laurent has a Microsoft Office 2003 and XML presentation online [ http://simonstl.com/articles/officeXML/ ] (looks like the one he gave at OSCON from comparison with Cam's notes [ http://www.camworld.com/archives/001223.html ]).
Posted by: leonard at July 15, 2003 05:46 PM
