The E-Forms Proposition

Code-named XDocs, the technology,unveiled by Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer at the Gartner Symposium/ITxpo 2002 here last week,is designed to connect the Office desktop to XML-tagged data stored across enterprises and XML Web services.

For example, XDocs will allow Office users to integrate data directly with their line-of-business processes, including CRM, ERP, supply chain and workgroup processes, Microsoft said.

XDocs, slated to go into beta testing by the end of the year, is a separate client application from Office, but Microsoft hasn't finalized packaging and pricing. A Microsoft spokeswoman also said the company has yet to determine whether XDocs will be integrated into a future Office version.

Microsoft plans to ship Office 11 in mid-2003 and the next version, code-named Office 12, in 2004 or 2005, sources say.

Some solution providers said XDocs is a clever way to stimulate sales of upcoming Office releases in the enterprise market and possibly in the SMB space,if the technology eventually can prove its value.

"Although it appears to certainly have application in the enterprise space, in terms of ERP integration, I can also see use for XDocs in our [SMB space," said Michael Cocanower, president of ITSynergy, a Phoenix-based solution provider. "On the surface, it sounds exciting to me. But anything that far out will have to be proven before it gains mind share."

Another solution provider said he's not sure if XDocs would function amid a network failure, even though it has an offline mode that lets users save their work before going online.

"XDocs is built on two enormous assumptions: It has been designed to work only on a network of computers that are up and running all the time, and

if critical information is inaccessible due to network or computer failure, XDocs fails," said Glenn Ricart, CTO of CenterBeam, Santa Clara, Calif.

The level of demand for such technology also remains unclear, Ricart said. "It's assumed there's market demand to build complex, compound documents drawing from various live sources. While that may be the case by the time XDocs reaches market, [so far the market has expressed little if any desire for this capability since Object Linking and Embedding (OLE) was introduced and productized five years ago," he said.