Microsoft Opens Office for Governments
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Microsoft (Quote, Chart) has extended its Government Security Program (GSP) by offering government customers access to the source code of Microsoft Office 2003.
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Microsoft Corp. announced this week it is making the programming code for its Office 2003 software suite available to government agencies around the globe, a move partly aimed at allowing them to inspect the product for flaws and security problems.
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FROM today, Microsoft is expanding a programme to give government organisations access to some of its tightly guarded software blueprints for the latest version of its Office software.
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In Berlin on Tuesday, Microsoft unveiled a product package aimed at local and regional e-government initiatives, in the midst of growing government opposition in Europe to proprietary software.Microsoft&#39;s Citizen Service Platform includes applications and templates designed for local and regional governments primarily in Europe and the United States. It is built on products, including SharePoint, Office Live, and Windows Server.While Microsoft has been selling software to the public sector for years, it has recently begun focusing on local governments after discovering that many people interact with their local governments more often than the federal government, said Ralph Young, vice president of Microsoft&#39;s Worldwide Public Sector group.Europe alone has more than 80,000 local and regional governments, Young said.Governments can use the Citizen Service Platform to create portals, manage documents, deploy alert systems in the case of emergencies, and create and manage citizen information databases that can be shared among different agencies.Microsoft is introducing the product as it faces&#160;mounting opposition Europe. Some governments there are migrating to open source products as a way to avoid being locked into a single vendor of proprietary software.Others, such as the Netherlands, are taking a more extreme route. Late last year, the Dutch parliament mandated that government organizations choose open source over proprietary software if a viable product is available. Agencies must also use open standards. The national government must comply with the new rules by May, with local governments following by the end of this year.Young was unfazed by the mandate. &quot;We have many opportunities in the Netherlands to work with local and regional governments,&quot; he said. &quot;We don&#39;t see any federal mandates having real impact locally because of local jurisdictions&#39; ability to make decisions in their best interest in terms of how to better serve citizens.&quot;Microsoft could be counting on local governments having autonomy from such federal mandates, said Mark Anderson, a consultant and founder of the Strategic News Service. &quot;There are a lot of times when a government will posture, and it doesn&#39;t really intend that posture to be carried through the rest of the country,&quot; he said.Still, some European government agencies may be predisposed to choose software other than Microsoft&#39;s, more so since the software giant began pushing its Open XML document format there, Anderson said. Microsoft is in the process of&#160;attempting to have Open XML be accepted as a standard&#160;by the International Organization for Standardization. Open XML competes with the Open Document Format promoted by IBM. Critics of Open XML accused Microsoft of stacking votes in the standardization process, souring some in Europe on Microsoft even further.Microsoft thinks that cost will determine decisions for many local governments. &quot;It&#39;s much less a religious discussion about open source and commercial software as it is about what are the solutions available that governments can see value from,&quot; said Young. &quot;Local governments are empowered to make decisions and if they say &#39;This is the best value for the dollar I spend over the life of a service capability, that will govern my decision-making process.&#39;&quot;
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Reinforcing its positioning of Office as not just an applications suite, but a development platform, Microsoft on Wednesday kicked off its first Office System Developer Conference.
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As part of its ongoing efforts to woo public sector customers, Microsoft Corp. has begun giving governments tools for collaborating and sharing technology information with other organizations so that they can learn from each other's experiences and cut development costs.
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Microsoft outlined a new feature that will be included in Office 2008 for Mac.
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Corel Corp. has released a free service pack to WordPerfect Office X3 that updates the business suite so it's compatible with Windows Vista.
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Microsoft Corp. will allow governments around the world that use its software to have controlled access to the source code for its pervasive Microsoft Office 2003 desktop offerings for the first time.
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Microsoft invites business users to preview its integrated performance management applications.
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Microsoft is planning free online versions of its word processing and spreadsheet programs.
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For a number of years, Microsoft has allowed government entities in most of the world access to the source code for Windows; as of today, Microsoft is expanding this so-called Shared Source Initiative to include Office.
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US software behemoth Microsoft Corp. said Thursday it would soon open an office in Canada, lamenting tough immigration rules in the United States that make it difficult to hire foreign staff.
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Lotus Symphony targets Microsoft Office with a free bundle of applications.
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Microsoft Corp.  launched Windows Vista for businesses on Thursday and said that by the end of next year more than 200 million people would use the new version of its dominant operating system or new office software and server computer products.
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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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Office, Microsoft Corp.&#39;s collection of programs for business documents and tasks, is fast becoming a software platform unto itself.