The new Office reaches out to back-end systems and the Internet for better data retrieval, collaboration and workflow, giving solution providers more to work with.

Outlook was one of the two key highlights of the New York launch for one large integrator. "This is a much better version of Outlook. They finally fixed it, and it is the single-biggest reason to upgrade the client," said John Parkinson, chief technologist for Cap Gemini Ernst & Young's Americas region. "The other was the elevation of Office from a personal productivity product to a corporate platform for knowledge worker productivity."

The redesigned interface "is a lot more intuitive,it really lets you see more information, do more faster. E-mail is a challenging thing even at the small-business level," said Jason Harrison, president of Harrison Technology Consulting, a Nashville, N.C., solution provider who services small-business accounts.

Brian Okun, director of marketing at Chips Computer Consulting, Lake Success, N.Y., ticked off as critical new perks the junk-mail filters, HTML content blockers, enhanced mail sorters, three-pane view and ability to open shared calendars.

Microsoft also strengthened Outlook Web Access (OWA), he noted. "The current OWA was just a browser-based window into the e-mail system. There was no function, just viewing. Today, OWA gives you 98 percent of the functionality of the desktop version," Okun said.

With Office 2003, many say Microsoft is trying to fulfill its pre-Web wish to make fat-client Office applications the front end to the rest of the computing universe.

"Office is becoming the face of our applications," said Andy Vabulas, CEO of I.B.I.S., a Norcross, Ga.-based provider of ERP and CRM solutions. "Everyone will feel more comfortable in the familiar environment and can gain value by being able to crunch numbers and unlock data that resides elsewhere."