Microsoft Sets Office 2003 Pricing, Ship Dates

Finally. Some real news about Microsoft Office Systems 2003, the sometimes bewildering array of desktop products that the company has talked about for more than a year.

On Tuesday, Microsoft, Redmond, Wash., will unveil estimated retail pricing of all the Office Systems components as the bulk of them are released to manufacturing.

The newly formalized Office Small Business Edition 2003 will be $449 or $279 as an upgrade, sources said. That product adds Publisher 2003 and Outlook 2003 with Business Contact Manager to the four standard Office applications (Word, Excel, Outlook and PowerPoint).

Estimated retail pricing for the Office SKUs is unchanged from the current Office XP edition. The Student & Teacher Edition will be $149, Standard Edition $399 and Professional Edition $499. Upgrades are typically $50 to $70 less.

While the disks start rolling Tuesday, the products will be available via volume licensing on Sept. 1 and the SKUs are expected to hit retail shelves Oct. 21, said sources familiar with the plans.

The high-end Office Professional Enterprise Edition, as previously noted, will be available only through volume license plans and will include InfoPath, which forges tighter links between the desktop applications and back-office data and processes. To see which products are included in which Office SKUs see Microsoft's site.

Other members of the Office Systems clan are InfoPath, and OneNote note-taking application. There are also new versions of Visio, Project and Access, the database that is part of the Office Professional SKU.

Last week Microsoft said another family member, Microsoft Project 2003, would go to manufacturing this week.

There are tight dependencies between these applications and the Windows Server 2003 operating system and Exchange Server 2003 e-mail. Observers say the new applications will bolster interest in those server products with their slick new capabilities. The new Exchange Server will be $3,999 for the enterprise edition, or $699 for standard edition. The upcoming SharePoint Portal Server 2003 will be $5,619 for the server plus five client access licenses.

Together, this collection of offerings comprises what Microsoft has internally called its iWave launch. The company had hoped to unleash this bevy of products in June, but additional beta testing pushed back the launch.