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Microsoft plans to unveil on Monday a tool for customizing Office 11 applications based on its Visual Studio programming environment.
The new tool, code-named Visual Studio Tools for Office, exploits the data-sharing capabilities of XML (Extended Markup Language) to help developers create Office-based applications. The enhancements are designed to let companies tailor Microsoft Word and Excel applications to their specific corporate processes and to link "islands of data," said Robert Green, lead product manager for Visual Studio at Microsoft.
"Business processes are not well-integrated, particularly when they include data at the desktop. We're going to see much better interconnections," Green said.
The tool will work with the Office 11 versions of Word and Excel, which are supposed to become available by the middle of next year.
With Office being tied to Visual Studio, people who work with Microsoft languages Visual Basic and C# stand to benefit from an environment aimed specifically at professional developers. Programmers can also take advantage of the .Net Framework in Visual Studio.Net, which automatically generates much of the lower-level coding needed for networked applications.
Microsoft rival Sun Microsystems plans similar developments for its StarOffice suite of applications. By the middle of next year, Sun plans to release a version of StarOffice that will let professional Java programmers customize StarOffice applications.
The new version of Microsoft's cash cow--code-named Office 11--comes as sales of the desktop software have begun to plateau, said analysts. While Office still controls more than 90 percent of the desktop office market, customers say they see fewer new features that would compel them to upgrade to the latest versions. Although a new licensing plan will help keep customers in the Microsoft fold, any slump in sales could make a big impact on the software maker's balance sheet. Office contributes nearly one-third of Microsoft's overall revenue.
What's new--and what's missing
Microsoft, which is ramping up Office 11 for a mid-2003 release, said the productivity suite will go out to about 6,000 testers within Microsoft and another 6,000 external beta testers. Only select testers will have access to this first beta version, although Microsoft plans a more widely available Office 11 test sometime in the first quarter.
Microsoft hasn't fully disclosed the new features of Office 11, beyond greater XML integration. The software maker did say that Office 11 will include a revamped Outlook e-mail client. The software giant has moved the preview pane, which will now use technology found in Microsoft Reader, to the side of the screen.
Microsoft also is introducing what it calls "Search Folders," which allow the same piece of mail to appear in multiple folders. In addition, the new product will pick up extra features when attached to an Exchange Server, such as a special cache mode that speeds up accessing the Outlook e-mail data file.
One planned component of Office 11 has been shelved. Microsoft had been considering offering additional Web services derived from the company's stalled .Net My Services initiative. Office 11 users could have subscribed to additional Web services--such as online calendaring and Web-based e-mail--that would have been an adjunct to the productivity suite, but Microsoft essentially has scrapped this plan. These additional services, if any, would be provided by third-party developers, not Microsoft.
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