REDMOND, Wash., May 13, 2002 — Microsoft Corp. today announced that more than 60 million customers have been licensed for Office XP since the product was launched nearly one year ago. License numbers for Microsoft®
Office XP are more than double the number for Office 2000 licenses during a comparable time frame.
“In this era of intense IT budget scrutiny, companies are seeing value in Office XP as a critical part of their business strategy,” said Steven Sinofsky, vice president of Office XP at Microsoft. “The level of investment we’re seeing validates our conviction that Office XP increases business productivity and delivers business value and new solution opportunities like no other desktop software.”
Why Companies Are Choosing Office XP
Companies of all sizes are choosing Office XP to enable more efficient content creation and collaboration, as well as to build customized business applications that employ such technologies as XML Web services — all of which help companies better meet a variety of business goals.
An example is Cascade Designs Inc., a manufacturer of outdoor recreation equipment that has been in business for more than 20 years. Historically, Cascade has tracked and processed consumer repair orders in a standalone application. A key issue it faced was integrating business processes from the customer returns group and the consumer repairs group into the J.D. Edwards ERP system it has invested in and used for a decade. To complicate matters, Cascade recently acquired Mountain Safety Research Inc., which had its own spreadsheet-based returns process.
Cascade addressed this problem with the help of Avanade Inc., a Microsoft global alliance partner, which developed a custom solution based on XML Web services and Excel 2002. Avanade’s solution provided the Cascade Design repairs team with a simple-to-use interface much like an Excel worksheet. The repair team’s processes now are seamlessly tied into the rest of the organization, and the critical data is centrally housed in the J.D. Edwards system.
“I’m extremely impressed with the power of XML Web services and the ability of Office XP to consume those services. The implications and opportunities this presents for our business are tremendous,” said Ken Meidell, CIO of Cascade Designs. “To be able to deliver this solution in six weeks, in an application that my people are already familiar with, provides a significant increase in productivity as well as better responsiveness to our customers.”
BNP Paribas, a leading financial services group with a presence in Europe, Asia and the United States, is in the process of a global rollout of Office XP and Windows®
XP to desktops worldwide. In March 2002, BNP started its rollout to tens of thousands of workstations, and it is expected to be accomplished in a 24-month time frame. This deployment has been automated partly through the use of the Microsoft Systems Management Server (SMS).
“Since the merger, BNP Paribas has been obtaining significant synergies through the strategic use of mission-critical technologies,” said Denis Fortin, head of Global Infrastructure for BNP Paribas. “Our decision to adopt Office XP and Windows XP technologies and build upon our SMS infrastructure within the image global desktop initiative reflects our commitment to use the most appropriate technology to support our business development efforts while letting us reap cross-business synergies. We feel the Office XP and Windows XP combination is the right platform to let us obtain the level of reactivity, productivity and operational integrity our business users demand.”
The Extended Office XP Experience
Companies now can use Office XP beyond core applications as a vehicle to create their own compelling solutions for external and internal use. A prime example is the development of customized third-party smart tags, which enable real-time, dynamic recognition of content and offer relevant options to workers, allowing them to quickly access and analyze information. FedEx Corp., the premier provider of transportation, e-commerce and supply chain management services, is already tapping into the value of Office XP with its own customized smart tags. Smart tags from FedEx enable its customers running Office XP to obtain shipping information directly from within their already familiar Office applications.
“With smart tags from FedEx, we are able to give our customers significant value, saving them both time and money,” said Karen Rogers, vice president of e-commerce marketing for FedEx. “Customers can get to a variety of shipping applications with just one or two clicks from directly within an Office XP document or e-mail message. The ability to increase customer satisfaction without having to invest a lot of our own time and money was especially attractive to us.”
FedEx customer JED Group Ltd., a computer consulting and value-added reseller firm, is using smart tags from FedEx and, as a result, has already been able to shift more than one employee who previously dealt with customer calls on tracking and rating issues to more profitable consulting duties.
“Smart tags from FedEx have been extremely helpful in streamlining our processes and meeting our customers’ needs,” said Elliott Davidow, managing partner of JED Group, who emphasizes that his customers’ emergency needs make shipping and response times crucial. “I consider the smart tags from FedEx to be a ‘killer app’ because they marry applications and greatly simplify our workflow.”
About Office XP
Office XP provides a much smarter work experience for individuals, teams and organizations. It makes productivity simple for individuals by helping them get the most out of Office and giving them tools they can rely on. Office XP enables collaboration for everyone by revolutionizing the way people work with others on documents and introducing SharePoint (TM) Team Services to manage projects and activities via the Web. Office XP also provides a flexible way to solve business needs by delivering rich business solutions and improved security and reliability tools businesses need to deploy and manage Office.
About Microsoft
Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT”) is the worldwide leader in software, services and Internet technologies 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.
Microsoft, Windows and SharePoint are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corp. in the United States and/or other countries.
The names of actual companies and products mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners.
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