Gates: $6.8B For R&D
At the company's annual financial analyst meeting last week, Chairman and Chief Software Architect Bill Gates said Microsoft will invest $6.8 billion during its 2004 fiscal year to enable "integration innovation" across its 2003 product lineup and next-generation Longhorn Windows clients and server platform, which is due after 2005.
"It's a serious number," Gates said about the investment, a 6 percent hike from last year. "The goal is to [make] R&D activities %85 synergistic, to take XML Web services, management and UI advances [of Longhorn] and drive those across all the different products. Longhorn is not just the release of [a] Windows client. It's in the same time frame [for] Office and server products, where everything is synchronized to build on this platform and take advantage of that."
The integration of Office 2003 with new communications technologies,including Microsoft Office Live Meeting 2003 (formerly PlaceWare) and Microsoft Office Live Communications Server 2003 (formerly Office Real-Time Communications Server),will deliver business value Linux vendors cannot match, Gates said. "We're excited about having Office connect to PlaceWare," he said.
Also, integration of XML support will allow Office 2003 users to connect to back-end systems, databases and business processes, executives said. And the integration of Outlook 2003, Exchange 2003, CRM and Microsoft Business Solutions applications with Office 2003 will add compelling value, they said.
Gates also said peer-to-peer collaboration, wireless and workflow technologies will be integrated with Office 2003, and the Longhorn Windows wave of products will deliver high ROI and reduce cost of ownership over the next few years.
Microsoft also plans to incorporate its Digital Rights Management, workflow technologies and even possibly the "Jupiter" e-business software stack into Windows, Gates said. "Some technology we pioneer in Jupiter and workflow will become part of the Windows Server base fabric," he said.
Channel partners are essential to making the integration strategy pay off, executives said. Microsoft plans to launch this October a new 2004 partner program that will give channel partners more incentives to drive Windows Server business in the SMB and enterprise segments.
Microsoft also predicted that forthcoming upgrades of other bread-and-butter products,Office Systems 2003 and Windows Small Business Server 2003,will help stimulate average revenue growth of between 6 percent and 9 percent for its 2004 fiscal year.