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By silicon.com, 6 March 2003 16:54

COMMENT Microsoft is about to reposition Office. Rather than promoting it as just another application in its portfolio - comprising Word, Excel et cetera - the company will try to move it up the food chain and treat it as a platform in its own right. Some product name changes will be introduced later this year to reflect this shift. Outlook 2003 is set to be called Office Outlook 2003 and the new version of Word will be Office Word 2003. Developers will be encouraged to write their own applications for this 'new platform'. From a marketing perspective, this makes a lot of sense. As one analyst put it, Office will become a "horizontal productivity program", and will enable the company to continue to pull one of its more successful tricks: persuading users that it's good for them to integrate Microsoft applications with its platforms. In the past, it's done the same thing (almost illegally) with IE and Windows. RealNetworks launched its media player software before Microsoft's but look who's doing better now. So it will be with any new additions to Office - the most significant of which could well be CRM software. A key element of the new Office is InfoPath, an XML-based application for organising and sharing data. It seems Microsoft is hoping that it will end up being used as a front end to existing CRM and ERP apps. Software from the likes of Siebel and SAP isn't always popular with end users, simply because they don't like their front end clients. And that's a big, big opportunity for Microsoft, which wants to double the amount of annual revenue pulled in by its Information Worker division, which oversees Office. There are one or two hurdles to overcome, however. Early reports suggest InfoPath is massively complex and may hinder its uptake. But it's only at the beta testing stage, so some of those usability issues may be overcome. But even if they're not, the chances are this new strategy will succeed. Microsoft's move to make Office a platform which sits nicely on top of Windows, and all its applications sit nicely on top of Office, is a masterstroke. New releases will be pitched as Office bolt-ons, and before you know it Microsoft will own the CRM and ERP markets too. The company needed XML to come along to act as the 'glue' and, again with a nod to its past, it needed a little time to create its own 'standard' form of it - but now that technology is here, expect the Redmond giant to keep growing its revenues. Scary really, isn't it?