Microsoft took one of the last steps toward the general availability of the newest version of its office productivity family Monday when it began distributing a half-million copies of the beta 2 version of the newly rebranded Microsoft Office System. Microsoft plans to launch the Office System this summer. Formerly known simply as Microsoft Office, […]
Microsoft took one of the last steps toward the general
availability of the newest version of its office productivity family Monday
when it began distributing a half-million copies of the beta 2 version of
the newly rebranded Microsoft Office System. Microsoft plans to launch the
Office System this summer.
Formerly known simply as Microsoft Office, the Redmond, Wash.-based
software giant has been trying to reposition its flagship software as an extensible platform for business
applications. The productivity suite has taken on the name Office 2003, but
Office System itself is an umbrella for a family of products which includes
Publisher, FrontPage, SharePoint Portal Server 2.0, and the new InfoPath
and OneNote applications.
As part of its plan, Microsoft has also renamed the individual applications
that ship with the Office System in an effort to tie them more tightly with
the Office brand. For instance, the core Office 2003 applications have
become Office Word 2003, Office Excel 2003, Office Outlook 2003, Office
PowerPoint 2003 and Office Access 2003. The other applications in the
Office System have also taken on the Office moniker.
The Office System is a piece of Microsoft’s overall goal to create an
office productivity ecosystem that uses XML
software, servers and services to create a collaborative business
environment with strong support for information gathering and sharing.
“Today’s work force is geographically dispersed, information-hungry and
constantly striving to be more effective and efficient,” said Joe Eschbach,
corporate vice president of the Information Worker Product Marketing Group
at Microsoft. “The applications in the Microsoft Office System are central
to addressing these problems, and by offering them all together, we are
giving customers the opportunity to experience firsthand how deploying the
Microsoft Office System improve communication and collaboration across
enterprises — small and large.”
Microsoft explained that Office System was designed to support four key
goals:
Because Microsoft envisions Office System as a platform rather than simply
as an applications suite, the company is also opening the doors to business
partners to create solutions that integrate with its offering. One such
partner is Factiva, which has created Factiva News Search, which ties into
Office 2003 to give information workers the ability to research Factiva’s
collection of nearly 8,000 sources directly from their workflow.
For instance a worker drafting a brief in Word 2003 could use Factiva News
Search within Word 2003 to look up industry trends from newspapers,
journals and newswires and then insert that research into the document.
News Search will be integrated into the Research Task Pane of all the core
Office 2003 applications.
“Information is only empowering if a business or information worker can use
it in the right place at the right time to make or influence a business
decision,” said Clare Hart, president and CEO of Factiva. “Today, that
doesn’t happen often enough. Incredible amounts of content are lost or lie
untapped around the world because businesses aren’t equipped to manage that
information.
The beta 2 kit Microsoft released Monday does not include Microsoft Project
and Visio, its project management solution family and its diagramming
solution, respectively. Both however, come under the Office System curtain.
Other Microsoft products that are part of the ecosystem, though not
specifically part of the Office System aegis itself, are the forthcoming
Windows Server 2003 and Windows SharePoint Services.
Ethics and Artificial Intelligence: Driving Greater Equality
FEATURE | By James Maguire,
December 16, 2020
AI vs. Machine Learning vs. Deep Learning
FEATURE | By Cynthia Harvey,
December 11, 2020
Huawei’s AI Update: Things Are Moving Faster Than We Think
FEATURE | By Rob Enderle,
December 04, 2020
Keeping Machine Learning Algorithms Honest in the ‘Ethics-First’ Era
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE | By Guest Author,
November 18, 2020
Key Trends in Chatbots and RPA
FEATURE | By Guest Author,
November 10, 2020
FEATURE | By Samuel Greengard,
November 05, 2020
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE | By Guest Author,
November 02, 2020
How Intel’s Work With Autonomous Cars Could Redefine General Purpose AI
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE | By Rob Enderle,
October 29, 2020
Dell Technologies World: Weaving Together Human And Machine Interaction For AI And Robotics
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE | By Rob Enderle,
October 23, 2020
The Super Moderator, or How IBM Project Debater Could Save Social Media
FEATURE | By Rob Enderle,
October 16, 2020
FEATURE | By Cynthia Harvey,
October 07, 2020
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE | By Guest Author,
October 05, 2020
CIOs Discuss the Promise of AI and Data Science
FEATURE | By Guest Author,
September 25, 2020
Microsoft Is Building An AI Product That Could Predict The Future
FEATURE | By Rob Enderle,
September 25, 2020
Top 10 Machine Learning Companies 2021
FEATURE | By Cynthia Harvey,
September 22, 2020
NVIDIA and ARM: Massively Changing The AI Landscape
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE | By Rob Enderle,
September 18, 2020
Continuous Intelligence: Expert Discussion [Video and Podcast]
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE | By James Maguire,
September 14, 2020
Artificial Intelligence: Governance and Ethics [Video]
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE | By James Maguire,
September 13, 2020
IBM Watson At The US Open: Showcasing The Power Of A Mature Enterprise-Class AI
FEATURE | By Rob Enderle,
September 11, 2020
Artificial Intelligence: Perception vs. Reality
FEATURE | By James Maguire,
September 09, 2020
Thor Olavsrud is a journalist covering data analytics, security, infrastructure, and networking for CIO.com. He's especially interested in companies that use data to transform their business to tackle problems in innovative ways. As a senior writer, his articles focus on practical insights, analysis, and business use cases that can help CIOs and other IT leaders navigate the shifting IT landscape.
Datamation is the leading industry resource for B2B data professionals and technology buyers. Datamation's focus is on providing insight into the latest trends and innovation in AI, data security, big data, and more, along with in-depth product recommendations and comparisons. More than 1.7M users gain insight and guidance from Datamation every year.
Property of TechnologyAdvice. © 2025 TechnologyAdvice. All Rights Reserved
Advertiser Disclosure: Some of the products that appear on this site are from companies from which TechnologyAdvice receives compensation. This compensation may impact how and where products appear on this site including, for example, the order in which they appear. TechnologyAdvice does not include all companies or all types of products available in the marketplace.
