Linux Desktops Not Good Enough For Information Work, Microsoft's Raikes Claims

Jeff Raikes, group vice president of Microsoft's Productivity and Business Services, said the integration of collaboration, communications and XML support into the Office 2003 suite will offer a far greater business value than what the open-source competition can deliver.

Sources at Microsoft said the company plans to launch Office System 2003 in late September.

"The competitors aren't good enough for information work," Raikes told attendees at Microsoft's Redmond, Wash., annual conference for financial analysts. "[Their offerings aren't] cheaper than Office 2003 when they think about the total value equation."

That's because Microsoft has bundled several other products and capabilities with the upcoming product, including its next-generation SharePoint Portal 2.0, its Office Live Meeting Web conferencing offering and realtime communications features of Microsoft Office Live Communications Server, Raikes said. Also, integration of support for XML and extensible XML schemas will allow Office 2003 users to connect to back-end systems, databases and distributed applications.

"Office is becoming integrated into business processes," Raikes said. "CIOs are under pressure to do more with less. It's an opportunity to bring the integration into the organization."

Further, the integration of Outlook 2003, Exchange 2003, InfoPath XML e-forms, OneNote digital-ink applications, CRM and Microsoft Business Solutions applications with Office 2003 will add compelling value that forthcoming corporate Linux desktops from Sun and Red Hat simply can't deliver, Raikes said.

"We want to make sure [customers and partners] understand the value, not just the cost, of software," Raikes said. The deployment of StarOffice or OpenOffice would cost dramatically more than that of Office 2003, he said.

At least one Sun executive, however, said the company will recruit channel partners aggressively to sell its next-generation, lower-cost Linux desktop, code-named Mad Hatter, which is scheduled for release later this summer.

"Today people are paying [Microsoft Office] license upgrades north of $300 and $500, and we can come out with an acquisition cost that's considerably less--a savings of two [times] to four times over the life cycle," said Peter Ulander, director of marketing at Sun. "Mad Hatter comes with integration and development tools. Customers want a client front-end and back-end infrastrucure and, as such, Mad Hatter will provide connectors into the [Sun] Orion [software stack] back end, as well as mainstream solutions. A lot of this stuff has to be out-of-the-box."