Microsoft To Launch Visual Studio Tools For Office Next Week

The toolset, in beta test since last spring, will take it's official bow at the VS Connections Conference in Palm Springs next week, Microsoft sources confirmed.

The goal of this software is to bridge the gap between developing desktop applications atop Office technologies and for Windows, Microsoft has said.

Pricing will be announced at the show, which starts October 12. On October 21, Microsoft will host the Office System 2003 coming-out party in New York to be followed by more than 60 regional launches of Office and its component applications. The applications have been available to volume purchasers since mid September and Exchange Server 2003 since August.

With this wave of products, Microsoft hopes to win over not just corporate users and consumers, but ISVs and developers who can use InfoPath technology, for example, to forge links between desktop and back-office applications. The Visual Studio For Office Tools also target this constituency.

Jeff Raikes, Microsoft group vice president of productivity and business service, stressed Office-as-a-platform for developers at his keynote address Friday morning at Microsoft's annual worldwide partner conference n New Orleans.

After his speech, Raikes told CRN that there will always be room for innovation atop the Office/Windows stack. "What we do in no way obviates the value [of what ISVs] do. The fact that we make it a rich platform does not eliminate opportunity, it accelerates opportunity."

Some third party ISVs agree that Microsoft has furnished them a rich toolset an platform, but also noted that Microsoft's expanding stack is a cause for some concern.

Microsoft's application plans are always a big topic of conversation among ISVs, said Mike Sayen, director of PLM Solutions, an ISV arm of EDS based in Ames, Iowa.

ISVs have to focus on their core area of expertise going forward, said David Monks, CEO of Equilibrium, a San Rafael, Calif.-based ISV.

To ease ISV concern, Microsoft must continue to keep ISV partners apprised of its product plans well in advance, several ISVs concurred. "ISVs always have to know where Microsoft is going so you're not building what Microsoft is going to build," added Bill Carlisle, director of Hewlett-Packard's Microsoft Solutions Group, Nashua, N.H.

In other Microsoft news, the company said Friday it released the first public beta of SQL Server 2000 Reporting Services. And the company listed an array of third party anti-virus, anti-spam and other partners who have wares ready to go for Exchange Server 2003.

Symantec, Sybari, Trend Micro and about 200 other partners have add-ons and utility products ready to go for the Microsoft mail server, said Chris Baker, group product manager.