DALLAS, June 2, 2003 — Today at Microsoft®
TechEd 2003, Microsoft Corp. announced a series of new initiatives aimed at helping a wide range of industry partners develop and deploy Microsoft Office System-based productivity solutions. The initiatives will augment the current Microsoft Certified Partner Program and will allow partners to gain greater access to technical readiness and business opportunities with Microsoft Office System customers.
One of the most anticipated product launches from Microsoft in 2003, the Microsoft Office System creates new opportunities for industry partners to deliver solutions that increase individual, team and organizational productivity without the burden of lengthy learning curves. More than 40 Microsoft industry partners are demonstrating their Microsoft Office System-based solutions at TechEd 2003 in Dallas this week.
New Partner Initiatives
Microsoft already offers partners a number of resources to help create and market their productivity solutions, including the Microsoft Certified Partner Program, MSDN®
subscriptions, beta programs, go-to-market campaigns and solution accelerators. To date, thousands of partners have taken advantage of these and other resources to create solutions for their customers.
Now, as part of the effort to help business partners maximize opportunities to create customer productivity solutions on the new Microsoft Office System platform, Microsoft will add several new programs to its current lineup. The new initiatives are available to a wide range of business partner organizations, such as ISVs, systems integrators, service providers and others, and include the following:
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Microsoft Office System Solution Directory offers partners the opportunity to showcase solutions at no cost and provides customers and Microsoft field representatives around the world with information about customer-ready Microsoft Office-based enterprise business solutions that map to specific solution categories. More information can be found at http://www.microsoft.com/office/techinfo/solutions/ .
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Office Marketplace is a new section of the Office Web site designed to connect Office customers with products and services that enhance or extend an individual’s ability to accomplish tasks with Office. Free listings can be found at http://office.microsoft.com/marketplace/ .
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Microsoft Office System Partner Solution Builder Program is designed to help partners in the United States and Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) drive new business opportunities with the upcoming version of the Microsoft Office System via training vehicles, development support and marketing opportunities. More information is available on the Web at http://www.officesolutionbuilder.com/ (U.S.) and http://boss.microsoftemea.com/ (EMEA).
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Microsoft Smart Client Readiness Program for ISVs. This launch pad is designed to provide ISVs with resources to build software products on Microsoft
“smart”
client technologies, including Microsoft Office System and Pocket PCs. Details will be available in August at http://members.microsoft.com/partner/isv . ISVs can visit this site now to become a Microsoft industry partner, subscribe to the Microsoft for Partners ISV Edition newsletter, and learn about other resources such as the Microsoft Empower Program for ISVs.
“We’re thrilled that other companies, such as EDS, Factiva, HP and Xerox Corp., are already taking advantage of the development opportunity to create great Microsoft Office System-based solutions for their customers,”
said Joe Eschbach, corporate vice president of the Information Worker Product Management Group at Microsoft.
“Our customers want to access their information in whatever system it resides, improve efficiencies in their key business processes and work more easily with other people. The solutions we — and partners — are building with the Microsoft Office System will help our customers do that and more.”
Partner Solutions
The Microsoft Office System offers partners more opportunities than ever to enter new markets, increase customer service and drive new revenue opportunities to help solve the business problems facing information workers and organizations today. With expanded support for Extensible Markup Language (XML), a familiar interface and powerful development tools built on Visual Studio®
.NET, the Microsoft Office System is an ideal development platform for building powerful solutions. The following are just a few of the solutions customers will be discussing at TechEd 2003 (listed alphabetically):
EDS
Enterprise companies understand the extent of resources needed to support human resource (HR) efforts. EDS realizes this as well and has built an HR Office System solution, aimed at reducing the costs associated with HR processes. The solution, built on the Microsoft Office SharePoint (TM) Portal Server 2003, Microsoft Office InfoPath (TM) 2003 and the XML support in Microsoft Office Professional Edition 2003, enables companies to reduce costs by consolidating and automating many HR-related business processes and create an effective self-assistance HR platform.
“We’re excited to offer such a highly open and scalable human resource solution based on the Microsoft Office System,”
said Walt Wolenski, service line manager for Digital Work Environment at EDS.
“Using the EDS HR Office System solution, companies can empower their employees to complete many of the HR-related activities themselves, which would normally require the intervention of dedicated HR professionals. This reduces costs and allows HR professionals to focus on removing the obstacles that stand in the way of their company’s ability to meet its full potential.”
Factiva, a Dow Jones and Reuters Company
Factiva understands the value of making sure information workers have the right information when making key business decisions. Factiva’s first solution for Office, Factiva News Search, allows information workers to conduct research on Factiva’s collection of nearly 8,000 news and business information sources directly from a report or presentation they’re creating. For example, while drafting a competitive brief in Microsoft Office Word 2003, competitive intelligence professionals can use Factiva News Search to look up important industry trends quickly in the most influential newspapers, journals and news wires from around the world, and use that knowledge to enhance their documents. As a result, Factiva’s customers spend less time looking for important information and more time acting on it.
“In today’s time-compressed workday, information workers are looking for ways to use their time more efficiently, while feeling confident about the business decisions they’re making,”
said Clare Hart, president and CEO of Factiva.
“With Microsoft Office 2003 and its support for XML Web services, we were able to create a solution that ports our XML-based data directly into Office 2003 applications. Now, Office 2003 users have a faster, more convenient way to check a fact or research a business topic and incorporate that intelligence into business documents and presentations.”
HP
HP is updating its Education Enterprise Portal solutions to take advantage of new technologies in SharePoint Portal Server 2003, Windows®
SharePoint Services and Microsoft Office Professional Edition 2003. Using the updated solution, parents will be able to more effectively communicate with teachers and track their children’s attendance, homework status and grades; students will be able to collaborate with each other on school projects; and teachers and administrators will be able to access and leverage existing information and knowledge to develop curricula for their students.
“By leveraging customers’ investments in Microsoft Office System applications, HP Services can build HP ProLiant server-based solutions with an outstanding return on investment,”
said William Carlisle, director of Microsoft Solutions for HP Industry Standard Servers.
Xerox
Xerox Corp. is combining XML-based Smart Documents in Microsoft Office Professional Edition 2003 with its 20-year history of studying document life-cycle management to build customer-centric solutions that reduce costs by automating processes associated with document creation, publishing and management.
One solution, created for Continental Airlines Inc., will automate processes and reduce the time required for the dissemination of maintenance advisories for its technicians by more than 50 percent, improving productivity and saving Continental more than $60,000 each month. Another solution will allow customers of McGraw Hill Construction (MHC) to mine information directly from http://www.construction.com/ and use that information for business development and task management of bid responses — all within the familiar Office environment. Xerox anticipates launching a full slate of industry-specific and business-problem-targeted solutions based on the new Microsoft Office System concurrent with the release of Office 2003.
“The Microsoft Office System provides us with new opportunities to develop XML and document management solutions that decrease our customer’s operating costs by automating processes and making the management of documents and their content more efficient,”
said Deborah Newman, North American Microsoft strategist with Xerox Global Services.
“Because the solutions are built on the familiar Office interface, our customers can begin realizing value from the solutions immediately, without requiring a lot of additional training and ramp-up time.”
Partner Support at TechEd 2003
Numerous Microsoft partners have begun to develop solutions based on the Microsoft Office System platform. The following companies will demonstrate these solutions at the show: Activiti Inc., American LegalNet Inc., AuthentiDate Inc., BrightWork, Cardiff Software Inc., Citrix Systems Inc., CommVault Systems Inc., Decision Support Panel, Econium, EDS, EMC Corp., Factiva, Fenestrae, firstRain, Groove Networks Inc., HP, Immedient Corp., Intel Corp., J2 Global Communications Inc., Juice Software Inc., KVS, Legato Systems Inc., NetIQ Corp., NGRAIN Corp., Pcubed (Program Planning Professionals Inc.), Pragmatech Software Inc., Project Assistants Inc., Quilogy Inc., ScanSoft Inc., Source Code Corp., Sybari Software Inc., Symantec Corp., Teamplate Inc., The Project Group GmbH, Unisys Corp., Venali Inc., VERITAS Software Corp., Wipro Technologies, Xcential LLC and Xerox.
About the Microsoft Office System
The Microsoft Office System offers an easy way to help more people use information to positively impact their business. Through a system of familiar and easy-to-use programs, servers and services, users can connect people and organizations to information, business processes and each other — helping ensure they derive the most value out of information. The Microsoft Office System consists of Microsoft Office 2003 Editions, Microsoft Office FrontPage® 2003, Microsoft Office InfoPath 2003, Microsoft Office OneNote (TM) 2003, Microsoft Project and Project Server, Microsoft Office Publisher 2003, Microsoft Office Real-Time Communications Server 2003, Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal Server 2003 and Microsoft Office Visio®
2003. Enabling technologies, such as Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services, Microsoft Windows Server (TM) 2003 and Microsoft Exchange Server 2003, enhance the features and functionality of products in the Microsoft Office System.
About Microsoft TechEd 2003
TechEd, one of Microsoft’s premier developer training events, which reaches more than 75,000 people worldwide annually, provides attendees with access to technical experts, the latest technical information, and hands-on labs to learn the skills they need to build state-of-the-art solutions. Sponsors of TechEd 2003 include Dell Computer Corp., HP, IBM Corp. and VERITAS Software Corp.
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, MSDN, Visual Studio, SharePoint, InfoPath, Windows, FrontPage, OneNote, Visio and Windows Server 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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