Microsoft In The Know

The time is ripe to rationalize all the piece-parts of technology that could help office workers find and reuse the data that is often stored in corporate data coffers but hard to locate, they said.

The thinking behind Microsoft's Knowledge Workers Solution Group, which is staffing up now in Seattle, is that since a huge percentage of knowledge workers use Office to create and save data and are also using other tools such as Microsoft Project, there might be better ways to combine features and functions of these products, said one source close to the effort.

Theoretically, a worker could use Office applications to create a self-service portal to manage tasks and business processes and analyze the overall business, according to internal Microsoft documents.

"It certainly would be advantageous if Microsoft were to package up all these benefits in a solution," said Andy Vabulus, president of I.B.I.S., an Atlanta-based solution provider.

Another motivating factor is the pressure Microsoft is under to boost upgrades, industry observers said. Standard and Poor's reported that growth of Office XP slowed to 1 percent and Windows XP to 9 percent last quarter. The reason could be the sluggish economy or simply that people see no need to upgrade from a product that already meets their needs, observers said.

The new group is the brainchild of Microsoft Group Vice President Jeff Raikes, company sources confirmed. He plans to discuss the group's efforts during his keynote address this month at PC Expo, according to the company.

Raikes was also instrumental in launching Microsoft Office in 1991. Some longtime Microsoft watchers credit him with evolving Office from a loose bundle of disks into an integrated suite that now boasts more than 90 percent market share.

Solution providers said the new group is further evidence of Microsoft's tendency to pack more links to back-end functions into its desktop applications.

"They've enriched Office to handle all the interfaces to structured data sources, and as they bring things in like Visio [charting software, Data Analyzer and Project, they really represent the entire presentation or touch layer," said Frank Cullen, principal at Blackstone and Cullen, another Atlanta-based solution provider.

At issue now is the wall that separates those user-facing layers from "the ultimate data engines," he said. It makes sense for Microsoft to make the interface to all that data, wherever it resides, less confusing, he said.