Thanks Cold of WiNBETA for this one. Microsoft on Monday plans to rebrand its flagship productivity suite "Office System," as the company attempts to reposition the product as a base around which businesses build custom solutions.
As previously reported, concurrent with the rebranding, Microsoft officially launched Office 2003 Beta 2, which will be available to about a half million beta testers and businesses. Microsoft mailed the software late last week to the 12,000 people that tested Beta 1, which was released in October. Microsoft plans to ship Office System during the summer.
As part of the rebranding, Microsoft is adding Office to the name of the individual applications. For example, Word 2003 would now be called Office Word 2003 or Outlook 2003 would be Office Outlook 2003. Office System represent the brand covering the whole family products, which includes Office 2003, Publisher and Visio, among other desktop software.
News source: c|net
As previously reported, concurrent with the rebranding, Microsoft officially launched Office 2003 Beta 2, which will be available to about a half million beta testers and businesses. Microsoft mailed the software late last week to the 12,000 people that tested Beta 1, which was released in October. Microsoft plans to ship Office System during the summer.
As part of the rebranding, Microsoft is adding Office to the name of the individual applications. For example, Word 2003 would now be called Office Word 2003 or Outlook 2003 would be Office Outlook 2003. Office System represent the brand covering the whole family products, which includes Office 2003, Publisher and Visio, among other desktop software.
News source: c|net
The change, along with widespread support for Extensible Markup Language (XML) throughout the suite, is part of a deliberate effort to focus less on individual applications and more on Office as "a platform" for enterprise development, said Gartner analyst Michael Silver.
"Microsoft wants enterprises to think of Office as more than just horizontal productivity programs," he said.
The rebranding comes as Microsoft looks to give enterprises new reasons to upgrade Office versions, at a time when the software giant is its own worst competitor. Office commands more than 90 percent market share in the productivity suite market, according to analyst estimates. But many businesses have been slow moving on the upgrades, typically skipping one version or more between upgrades.
According to analysts, the software titan faced significant hurdles getting businesses to move from Office 97 or 2000 to version XP, which Microsoft released in May 2001. In an informal survey conducted in October during Gartner's annual symposium, 31 percent of U.S. IT managers said their companies used Office 97, 56 percent Office 2000 and 6 percent Office XP. At the same time, a significant number of customers opted for the older Office 2000 over the newer XP last year. Office 2000 gained 15 percent market share in 2002, according to Gartner.
Office, along with Windows, is one of Microsoft's two flagship products. In the most recent quarter, Microsoft's Information Worker division, which is largely made up of Office, accounted for $2.4 billion of $8.5 billion in revenue. That figure is down from more than 40 percent of revenue a few years ago.
If successful, Microsoft's branding strategy could help "recharge Office sales," Silver said.
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