Microsoft Launches Office Developer Conference
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Microsoft plans to hold its first-ever conference for Microsoft Office software developers, the company announced this week. The conference, scheduled for February 2005, is part of a growing effort by the
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Microsoft is inviting approximately 800 specially selected developers to attend the first-ever Microsoft Office System Developer Conference from Feb. 2 through Feb. 4 in Redmond, Wash.
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PC-based 'studio in a box' will debut at broadcasters' conference.
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Microsoft Corp. has launched an online preview of its new Office business software, as part of efforts to drum up more interest in the coming set of releases.
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Microsoft Corp.&#039;s best-known business software is for creating spreadsheets, documents and presentations, but the company is hoping to convince corporations that it also can be the one-stop shop for sophisticated communications technology.
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At a conference for users of its Project software, Microsoft demonstrated a variety of features that likely will be in the next version of the project management application.
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Microsoft (Quote, Chart) and Polycom have formed a multi-year joint venture that will add Polycom&#39;s conferencing functionality to Microsoft Office Live Meeting.
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Office, Microsoft Corp.&#39;s collection of programs for business documents and tasks, is fast becoming a software platform unto itself.
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Microsoft Chairman and Chief Software Architect Bill Gates will share the stage Tuesday with nearly 15 system builders in a program to officially launch Microsoft&#39;s latest version of its
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With each update to its Office suite, Microsoft Corp. has piled on features aimed at boosting users' productivity and goosing sales of the world's most widely used collection of programs for handling documents, spreadsheets, e-mail and presentations.
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Microsoft Corp. and conferencing technology maker Polycom Inc. are teaming up to develop ways for people using PCs and other devices to hold virtual meetings with those using more traditional conferencing equipment.
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Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates talked publicly for the first time on Monday about the next big Office release, code-named Office 14, which he said will give users new ways to access their applications online.Microsoft won&#39;t provide the full functionality of Office online, but it will offer limited capabilities to view and edit the data in Office applications. It already does this for its Outlook e-mail client with a product called Outlook Web Access, and it will offer similar capabilities for other applications in Office 14, Gates said in a speech at the Microsoft Office System Developer Conference in San Jose, California.&quot;Outlook Web Access is not the full version of Office, but if you want to go into a kiosk or an Internet cafe and browse and connect, it gives you plenty of functionality,&quot; he said. &quot;As we look at all the modules [in Office 14], we have in mind the equivalent of Outlook Web Access,&quot; Gates said.It was the first time Microsoft had confirmed the &quot;Office 14&quot; moniker for the next release, although the Windows enthusiast Web site AeroXperience reported that fact recently, citing an internal Microsoft document. It also reported that a beta of Office 14 would appear this year with commercial release planned for 2009.Gates offered no timeline Monday and addressed Office 14 only briefly at the end of his speech, which focused on how developers can extend the current version of Office. He was answering a question from a developer in the audience who asked when Microsoft would provide full online access for Office in the same way Google does for its Google Apps service.&quot;There are lots of ways I can get to your Office data, but nothing compares to Google,&quot; the developer said.Google Apps is used mostly by smaller businesses today, but it is seen as a potential competitor to Office despite having more limited functionality. Microsoft, which makes much of its profits from its Office desktop software, has been criticized for moving too slowly in getting the applications online.It will take another step in that direction with Office 14 by offering Outlook Web Access equivalents of other Office applications such as Excel. &quot;If you look at spreadsheets, maybe you&#39;ll not be able to set up all the data models [online], but you&#39;ll be able to read documents, change a few assumptions, and try things out,&quot; Gates said.Outlook Web Access is a part of Microsoft&#39;s Exchange Server 2007 software, and it was unclear how the other Office 14 applications would be packaged and delivered. Gates did say that SharePoint Server, which is becoming more closely aligned with Office, &quot;will be able to render a greater set of Office documents in an HTML environment.&quot;
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Microsoft celebrated its Vista and Office 2007 business launch across the globe today, including a major event in New York.
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Microsoft, along with 24 other vendors, has formed a group that will hold technical meetings and joint testing sessions in an effort to foster improved interoperability between their products.
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Attendees of the launch event get Vista Ultimate, Office 2007, an Xbox 360 controller and a Games for Windows title.
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Responding to government requests for  interoperability, Microsoft Corp.  said on Thursday it  will offer free software that will allow Word, Excel and  PowerPoint to handle documents in rival technology formats.
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(InfoWorld) - Software giant Microsoft is focusing on selling to global technology manufacturers with a software suite it promoted at a Silicon Valley forum on Thursday. Microsoft showed off 2007 versions of its Office software suite for business functions, SQL Server database management system, Office SharePoint Server program for project collaboration and other products at its first-ever Global High Tech Summit in Santa Clara, California. Microsoft hopes to grab a piece of a growing market for IT spending by technology manufacturers next year. Fifty-nine percent of high-tech manufacturers surveyed by AMR ResearchÂ said they planned to increase their IT spending in 2007, averaging a 4.1 percent increase. An earlier survey about 2006 plans had shown only 42 percent planned to increase their spending, and they said they would boost it by an average of just 3.2 percent. Companies have already invested in technology to automate manufacturing processes, but now they are investing to be able to adjust production to changes in demand, said Eric Austvold, research director at AMR, in Boston. "They want to know how you create an agile supply network that ramps up a product to volume [production] quickly," Austvold said. The quicker a company gets a product to market, the more units it can sell. Microsoft is targeting product development, supply chain management, customer relationship management and operational performance, said Kevin Turner, Microsoft's chief operating officer, to about 400 participants at the daylong forum. Microprocessor maker Advanced Micro DevicesÂ uses a variety of Windows-based software in its chip fabrication plants and will upgrade to the new Vista operating system when it becomes available next year, said Tom Sonderman, director of automated precision manufacturing technology for AMD, in Sunnyvale, California. "Once we get Vista and get into 64-bit computing, you begin to raise the bar on the things we can do," said Sonderman. "There is an ongoing desire for us to have more computing power in the fab." Also at the event, Microsoft and IntelÂ jointly proposed anÂ open, interoperable industry standardÂ for document sharing based on the Office Open XML formats. The two companies presented the proposal to RosettaNet, a technology standards group. The Microsoft-Intel standard conflicts with one promoted by Adobe Systems. "They pushed Adobe aside with this announcement," said AMR's Austvold. "Adobe has been doing this already with a proprietary standard. This announcement trumps that and says, 'We [Microsoft] have got a standard we think is more open,' [although] I think thatâs debatable."