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Office Redux: This time it’s a system
Can Microsoft Office make the transition from a desktop
suite to a platform for enterprise applications? India Software Inc. thinks
it can, says Prashant L Rao
Office System 2003 is Microsoft’s second attempt
to take Office from being a set of desktop tools to something that’s fit
for building enterprise applications. Office XP was the first attempt. It helped
stir developer interest in building applications using Office applications as
components.
Second time around
So what’s different this time? For starters, there’s
InfoPath—Microsoft’s XML forms creation tool that makes it easy to
create forms that can be used to enter data offline or to pull data from existing
business systems. A big change is that Microsoft is cobbling together what we’ve
traditionally known as Office and many of its related BackOffice components
to create a meta-suite called Office System. “It is positioned as a sum
of products to help solve business problems,” says Karthik Padmanabhan,
marketing manager, Microsoft India.
 Microsoft
claims that it’s gone back to the drawing board after listening to what
enterprises have to say and created a system that helps integrate business applications,
providing a bird’s-eye view for white collar types. “Office System
is based on our experience working with enterprise customers. Companies can
gain more value from Office through integration with a line of business applications
offering a single unified view for information workers,” adds Padmanabhan.
For some time now, Microsoft has been touting XML as
a magic bullet to solve business integration problems. It has steadily moved
Office to XML file formats and this time around it has a tool that lets ISVs
create XML forms rapidly to build custom solutions around Office. ISVs, in turn,
believe that Office is finally enterprise-ready. “Windows 2003, IRM (Information
Rights Management), Exchange—the back-end infrastructure is now enterprise-ready,”
says Pavan Sabharwal, lead-Strategic Technology Initiatives at TCS.
With InfoPath for forms and the back-end hooks in place
with SharePoint and Exchange it is possible to build applications using Office
System as a platform that can interact with existing business systems for querying,
updating and analysing data.
Where it scores The familiarity card
Business users are very comfortable using Word or Excel.
Using Excel as the front-end for manipulating data in business systems is a
masterstroke that eases deployment and acceptance.
Sridhar Srinivasan, practice head, Global Microsoft
Business Unit at Wipro says, “To show the results of a search in a SAP
database, we can use a conventional Web or Windows front-end or, using Office
System 2003, display the results in an Excel 2003 file. If the results are such
that the requirement for them rose from some work the user was doing in the
Excel file earlier or if would use the results to do some further computation
in the Excel file before sending it back to the database, then it would make
sense to show the results in the same file. This way the user will not have
to leave Excel for performing complex database queries or searches. He can do
the same from the Excel file itself and resume work on the file without having
to leave Excel for even a minute.”
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According to Karthik Padmanabhan, Office System is
positioned as a sum of products to help solve business problems
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In this manner, developers are freed from the onerous
task of building complex front-ends and reporting interfaces. Sabharwal concurs,
“Users are very comfortable doing pivot tables and charts in Excel.”
That said, Office System isn’t a panacea for all
development tasks. Some types of applications lend themselves to it. Anything
with forms can be handled smoothly by InfoPath, which is very good for creating
front-end screens.
Shorter development cycles
Development time is shorter on Office than on .NET
by a factor of two. It’s also very easy to pick up. TCS’ team picked
up XML-based development with InfoPath in two days
Strong on managing documents and financial reporting
Office System is perfect for applications where document
management or financial reporting is required. The same is true for apps that
rely heavily on messaging. “Solutions that require lots of document management
(such as proposal creation), collaboration where certain sections are visible
only to certain people (IRM) are naturals for Office System. Excel is a no-brainer
in financial services for analysis of tabular data. Traditionally, you export
to Excel, here you eliminate the middle layer,” adds Sabharwal.
More feature-rich from the developer perspective
“Some features have been significantly enhanced
in Office System. Information Rights Management and XML becoming native are
two such features,” says P V S N Raju, associate vice president, Core Research
Group at Sonata Software. “By using InfoPath 2003 it is now possible for
users of worXPace [Sonata’s solution built atop Office System] to update
information even when they are not connected and the same is sent to the server
as and when they do connect.” Sonata is also using Project 2003 to integrate
activities such as market launches into worXPace.
In terms of ease of development on Office System vis-à-vis
Office XP, Sonata found some things to be easier while others were tougher.
“If you are looking at integration and XML, it’s easier in Office
System. But integrating Live Communications is more challenging than using NetMeeting.
Of course, it offers more features.”
SharePoint 2003 offers single sign-on, which was a
big plus for Sonata. “Otherwise we had to validate the user at every screen,”
adds Raju.
The downside
Needs Windows at the back-end
Companies that don’t have a Windows server set-up
will not benefit much as Office System relies heavily on Microsoft’s back-end
applications to do its stuff.
No easily deployable meta-suite
Microsoft doesn’t have a suite of applications
for sale that let a company deploy Office System in its entirety. Companies
will have to buy Office 2003 Pro and the individual server components separately.
That’s all right for a large enterprise but SMEs could get confused.
It’s expensive
A 100-user implementation of Office 2003 Pro and associated
server software could set a company back by as much as an ERP deployment! That’s
expensive.
Will it fly?
Now it’s a question of whether companies will
buy into the concept of Office as a system. Microsoft says that 40 to 50 percent
of its Indian installed base has migrated to Office XP. Going by its predecessor’s
track record and the fact that leading PC vendors such as Dell, HP and HCL bundle
the Office OEM edition with their PCs and notebooks, Office 2003 should have
a substantial installed base a year down the line. That said, there’s more
to Office System than the core suite of productivity applications. Office System
will only take off with those companies that are Windows shops and already have
server components such as Exchange in place.
For Office System to become a credible platform it
has to gain an installed base. That’ll take at least six months to a year.
Once that happens, it will make sense for enterprises to deploy applications
with Office as the front-end. Banks and financial institutions are already big
Excel users; it will be a natural fit for them to use it as a front-end to their
back-end systems. There isn’t much here for the individual or SOHO user,
they’ll be better off with the latest version of Microsoft Works.
| While Microsoft has put in considerable effort
to make Office developer friendly the core suite has been relatively untouched.
Here are some features that should have been part of Office 2003 but aren’t.
Voice recognition
While Microsoft has been paying a lot of
attention to handwriting recognition, the company has largely ignored
voice recognition. When basic voice recognition is a standard feature
on most cellular phones (voice commands); this is a strange omission.
Voice recognition in Word would be invaluable.
Text to speech
Often it is easier to spot mistakes in a
document if it is read out to you. Text to speech applications are quite
popular. Again, this would be a natural fit with Office.
Better language tools
It’s been a while since something new
came out of Redmond on this front. Adding a full-blown dictionary to the
suite would add value. While on the topic of language tools, when was
the last time the grammar checker got an overhaul?
Full-text indexing across Office
Finding stuff in Office documents is still
far from easy. A full-text search facility is essential but it’s
not there. You’ll probably see this feature as part of the OS in
Longhorn but it should have been there in Office 2003.
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| No application of the original suite has received
a facelift quite as prominent as Outlook has. The cleverly rearranged main
window displays more text in the message preview pane and mail is sorted
more meaningfully under classifications such as Today, Yesterday and Last
Week. Similarly, sorting messages by size is again simplified into categories
ranging from Tiny to Enormous.
On the server side, Exchange has been revamped
extensively. Allen Foo, regional solution marketing manager, Microsoft,
Asia Pacific & Greater China Regions says, “Mobility is a big
thing in the APAC region. The ability to access more data by cellphone—contacts,
mail, calendar [will be a big draw].” Exchange 2003 offers more options
for folks on the move. It supports a wider set of devices, including Windows
Mobile Devices using GPRS and laptops and tablet PCs through Wi-Fi.
Exchange is easier to administer in its latest
coming. An integrated administrative framework allows Exchange and Windows
to be administered from the same console.
High availability was a priority this time
around. “The uptime is tied to Windows 2003 and it is higher than
with Windows 2000. We expect to see consolidation of e-mail servers. Internally,
Microsoft used 200 servers in Exchange 5.5. With Exchange 2003 that’s
coming down to 19 servers for over 1,00,000 users worldwide,” adds
Foo.
Last but not least, security has been beefed
up. Anti-Spam technology from Hotmail has been enhanced and is used to
filter out junk mail in Exchange. Outlook 2003 supports Kerberos and SMIME.
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