PHOENIX, March 21, 2000 — Today at the first Office Deployment and Development Conference (ODDC), Microsoft Corp. announced immediate availability of the Microsoft® Office 2000 Service Release (SR-1), enabling companies to deploy Office 2000 with the latest updates. Microsoft also announced that just nine months after availability, Office 2000 was deployed on a record 16 percent of Office desktops worldwide, which is a deployment rate twice that of the previous version. The availability of the Windows® 2000 operating system and diminished Y2K concerns have spurred Office 2000 deployments at companies such as Nabisco Holdings and Texaco Inc., and the availability of SR-1 will further drive Office 2000 deployments.
“Office 2000 is experiencing unprecedented deployment success,”
said Joseph Krawczak, director of Office at Microsoft.
“It has already surpassed Office 97’s deployment rate. With the availability of SR-1 and Windows 2000, we expect more customers to make the move to Office 2000.”
Record Rate of Customer Deployments
Many customers have already benefited from deploying Office 2000. Nabisco Holdings, an international manufacturer of cookies, snacks and other premium food products, recently committed to deploying Office 2000 and Windows 2000 Professional to all desktops in its worldwide network. Office 2000 and Windows 2000 Professional will enable Nabisco to transform its culture into an
“e-culture,”
creating a Web-enabled desktop productivity infrastructure that will allow users to publish directly to the corporate intranet and share documents and data. Users will benefit from Office 2000’s collaborative and integrated data analysis features as well as its global-oriented desktop features. This new e-culture will help Nabisco reduce the time and effort required for in-store brand promotion, share and reuse current best practices, and improve the quality and promptness of information flow during acquisitions.
“Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional and Office 2000 provide us with a platform to develop and publish information on the company intranet and the Internet in an easy and standardized way, so we’ll have a timely and consistent flow of information throughout the company,”
said Dan Garlewicz, senior manager, Nabisco.
“The result is that we’ll see increased productivity, which is ultimately good for Nabisco’s bottom line.”
Rich Solutions Platform
As the second most popular development platform after Microsoft Windows, Office has continued to enhance the ways in which developers automate and customize applications. More than 2.6 million developers are currently creating custom Office applications that streamline business processes and expand product and service offerings to the Internet. Enterprise Communications and Messaging Solutions (ECMS), a Microsoft industry partner, is implementing a custom knowledge management and collaboration solution at Texaco, which has standardized 15,000 corporate desktops on the Outlook® 2000 messaging and collaboration client. The solution, TeamSpace@Texaco, enables Texaco drilling teams to organize information, collaborate with data, improve productivity and leverage corporate knowledge through a team-oriented work space using Outlook 2000 and the Web.
“TeamSpace@Texaco will enable Texaco teams to capture and share knowledge to reduce exploration and commercialization cycle time,”
said Andy Sakalian, president of ECMS.
“It is important for Texaco, as a global company, to have an enterprisewide, scalable solution. Outlook 2000 and Exchange make this knowledge management and collaborative infrastructure possible.”
Office 2000 SR-1 Availability
Office 2000 SR-1 is a collection of updates driven by customer feedback and is part of Microsoft’s commitment to deliver the latest product updates in one convenient installation. Office 2000 SR-1 is also Certified for Windows 2000. Office 2000 customers can download the SR-1 update at no charge* at http://officeupdate.microsoft.com/info/office2ksr1.htm . The SR-1 update on CD can also be ordered via the Web at no charge. More information on Office 2000 SR-1 can be found at http://www.microsoft.com/office/details/SR1.htm .
Office Deployment and Development Conference
The ODDC is a new forum for educating IT managers and developers on the latest methods for deploying Office 2000 and building customized productivity solutions for knowledge workers. The attendance at ODDC of more than 1,100 IT professionals, representing over 2 million desktops, indicates the customer demand for Office 2000. In addition to sessions specific to Office 2000 deployments, experts from around the world are presenting information on the tight integration between Office 2000 and Windows 2000, and knowledge management and collaboration scenarios using Office 2000 and Microsoft Exchange.
KPMG and ECMS will present a custom knowledge management solution running on Outlook 2000 and Exchange 5.5 that was created for companies that provide network consulting. The solution was built using a dynamic digital dashboard and enables organizations to capture and share knowledge through integrated taxonomies, threaded discussions and full-text searching.
“This solution allows our client to access and share knowledge directly from Outlook 2000,”
said John W. Hart, managing director, KPMG.
“This integrated knowledge management solution allows remote and local employees to find and share information quickly without leaving a communication environment they are familiar with. This alone has contributed to increased productivity.”
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“MSFT”
) is the worldwide leader in software for personal and business computing. The company offers a wide range of products and services designed to empower people through great software – any time, any place and on any device.
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