Office, Vista still on track

By Warwick Ashford for Microsoft

Johannesburg, 15 Sep 2006

Microsoft Office 2007 and Windows Vista are both still on track for release to business before the end of this year and to retail early in 2007, says Microsoft SA.

Announcing the release of a technical refresh of Office 2007 beta 2, Cyril Belikoff, information worker business group executive for Microsoft SA, said both products were still on track and thousands of South African customers were expected to take part in the final round of testing.

"With the release of this last external version leading to the final product, we are confident that Office 2007 and Vista will be quality ready by the end of the year," he told journalists at a media briefing in Bryanston.

Microsoft enlisted the help of 3.5 million customers with its Office beta 2 testing programme, including at least 3 500 South African customers representing small, medium and large business. An additional 22 000 copies were distributed locally in the company`s broadest global beta to date.

Belikoff says the overwhelming response locally and internationally has resulted in a technical refresh that delivers improved performance, integration, collaboration and user interface.

"The Office technical refresh includes new tools, resources and functionality as well as a new standalone search product for the enterprise, and we expect a positive response from all those local customers who took part in the beta 2 programme," he says.

Encouraging migration

Microsoft is offering a core search solution for the first time as part of the 2007 Office System beta 2 technical refresh. The core search software is a server component that will sit on the network to enable search facilities beyond the desktop across the shared documents throughout the enterprise.

"The standalone basic search product or stock keeping unit (SKU) is optional and must be downloaded or installed separately," explains Belikoff.

Microsoft hopes that by offering this core search component, customers who have immediate need of its functionality will see the value in migrating to the full Office System, which will include the full SharePoint enterprise search capability.

Belikoff says the Search SKU is also designed to be a point solution for mid-market and enterprise customers who do not need the full Office System. He says, in all likelihood, Microsoft partners will package the core search software as a network appliance.

Microsoft is hoping the response to the Office 2007 technical refresh will be as strong as the response to the first Office beta 2. Existing beta 2 customers can install the update as a patch over Office 2007 beta 2 or the technical refresh can be downloaded from the Microsoft Web site.

"We view the beta testing process as a key part of our development cycle because it provides us with the ability to not only get feedback on what we`re doing, but also feedback on issues that customers experience when using Office with other applications," says Belikoff.