Office 2007 Gets New Forms, Groove Servers

The lineup, due later this year, focuses on a new SharePoint Portal Server 2007 that melds SharePoint&'s usual portal capabilities with content management and Excel services, said Parri Munsell, Microsoft&'s group program manager for Information Worker Licensing and Pricing.

One East Coast partner executive applauded the last tidbit. “Hooray. We finally have a solution that can not only handle document creation and production—via productivity tools and SharePoint collaboration—but a way to control the flow of information in a publishing environment.”

An integrator also liked the merger of these products and the integration of Groove into the big picture. “When we saw what Microsoft had developed for internal use and saw the Groove integration plan, it really is what SharePoint should have been. The problem is the servers—especially Exchange—need major work before everything works well at scale so we have to wait for the [Office] 12 time frame and Longhorn servers,” he noted.

A new Enterprise client access license (CAL) adds access to enterprise search, spreadsheet publishing, form creation and “unified” messaging to the existing core CAL, which covers Windows Server, Exchange Server, SharePoint Portal Server and System Management Server.

Due to Redmond, Wash.-based Microsoft&'s Google fixation, the new Office also is permeated with search. Munsell said its inherent search builds on the same technologies and architecture that will come with the upcoming Vista Windows client.

Partners hope Office 2007 will at last drive users of older versions to upgrade and persuade those who license it to actually deploy it. “There&'s still a lot of shelfware out there. We expect Microsoft to launch aggressive plans to work with partners to finally move people off aged versions of Windows and Office,” said one large account partner.