Does having 700 partners on board for the Office System launch bear that out? |
It's certainly a part of it. But I tend to think of it differently. I think the big benefit of having so many partners onboard on Day 1... my excitement about that is it will really help show the rest of the world what's possible... In the end, if it's only 700 partners, I'll be disappointed.
But doesn't the partner support also have value as far as proving to customers that you're not trying to force them into an all-Microsoft software stack?
We are most impactive for our customers when we can offer the ability for a number of partners to enhance our software in a broad number of ways... Helping customers see that potential is a big part of this transformation; it's a big part of why we call this the Office System.
Was there a natural recognition by some of the big technology companies that they'd benefit from tapping into Office as a front end for complex enterprise software?
That's what our partners will tell you. Basically, they'd say they've made significant investments in their enterprise applications, and there is value in helping their users have easier access to that information and an easier connection to these business processes.
What's the rationale behind including Live Communications Server and other server-based products in the Office family?
The most important thing is that we are trying to think really broadly about information work. That's really the heart of what Microsoft Office System is about... And Windows SharePoint Services was created by the Office team, because we recognise that a combination of a bottom-up and top-down approach to knowledge management was the way for our customers to be the most successful.
Windows SharePoint Services enables grassroots collaboration; you don't have to depend on the IT department or even sophisticated end users who can write macros to be able to collaborate. Going further, with SharePoint Portal Services, you have the ability to make it easy for people to find knowledge within the organisation... The combination of bottom-up and top-down approaches is really the best way to improve the sharing of information. The best group in Microsoft to think about those kinds of problems is the Information Worker group, and that's why this kind of work comes from them.
