Short of that goal, the new Solution Accelerators seem designed to show the capabilities of the new Office suite and related Windows products in hopes of accelerating upgrades from previous versions. If the acquisition and deployment costs are reasonable, the Accelerator solutions could be a worthwhile investment for automating some business processes, especially for companies that want to squeeze more utility out of the Windows Office platform.
And, as Microsoft's array of spokespeople is quick to point out, the Accelerators are "partner friendly," spreading the money out by allowing third-party developers and integrators to customise, integrate and support the solutions.
Solution Accelerators are vapourware at this juncture, however. Anders Brown, group product manager, Microsoft Information Worker New Markets, told me the Accelerators would be rolled out in the coming months, but he wasn't forthcoming on any pricing, release date (starting in the fourth quarter), partner or detailed product information.
Nonetheless, the outline of the new initiative is fairly clear. According to Brown, the Accelerators in the queue focus on common business problems, and target users in medium-sized to large enterprises. The typical customer base is end users, or "information workers" in Microsoft parlance, actively engaged in using Office. The Accelerators include Office applications, additional software components, templates and guidance for architecting the solutions. It sounds a bit like the cross-application macros used in previous versions of Office.
The first seven Accelerators cover recruiting, proposal writing, Extensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL), Sarbanes-Oxley compliance, Six Sigma, business scorecards and Excel reporting.
