Gates Likely To Spill More Office 12 Deats At CEO Summit

Bill Gates recently said it. designated-Office-spokesfolk

That is not to say there won't be some real Office 12 news coming though. And soon. Expect some more Office 12 disclosures on Thursday when several hundred big corporate cheeses converge at Microsoft's CEO Summit.

Here's Microsoft's problem. Or opportunity. A large honking number of its Enterprise Agreement volume license pacts are up for renewal in the current quarter ending June 31. What corporate exec in his or her right mind would sign those big checks--typically for three-year deals--unless they hear something compelling about Office 12? Office is, after all, the priciest component of these volume licenses, according to Directions On Microsoft soothsayer Paul DeGroot.

The fact that a good chunk of current Office 2003 licenses are bought and paid for but remain undeployed, is the elephant in the room here.

It would be "inexcusable" for Microsoft to expect people to sign up not knowing what to expect, DeGroot says. Several times during Microsoft's third quarter 05 earnings call, execs mentioned the fact that a large number of these license are up for renewal this quarter. That's some kinda pressure.

So what might Microsoft Chairman Gates say? Here's what we already know re. current Office 12 plans:

First it will not require Longhorn, but run on Windows XP and Windows 2000.

That's good news for current PC owners. But probably not good news internally because it shows once again how Longhorn slips ripple throughout the company. Insiders say Office 12 was most definitely supposed to be a Longhorn release.

Second, the company will more deeply embed presence and realtime communication in the desktop apps. IM convos will be automatically saved to the Outlook folder, for example.

Perhaps more to the point, a confluence of current and planned technologies would enable a line-of-business manager—a non analyst—to get realtime alerts if, say inventories in the SAP ERP system run too low or high. Or if the CRM system logs a huge amount of problem calls. Those alerts could come in the form of a simple-looking IM "ping" or maybe a VoIP call. Or a standard email message depending on the situation and how the user sets up the system. This scenario and the one that IBM Software's Lotus group paints in its Workplace vision are very similar.

In Microsoft's case, this would require customers to buy into an array of desktop and server technologies ranging from the Office desktop apps to SharePoint Portal Server, SQL Server, and the planned "Maestro" scorecarding/realtime reporting server, sources said. Microsoft sources have said Maestro, which the company disclosed for the first time last week, will give "info workers" useful and personalized "dashboards" of the data they need to see. This is the type of stuff that EIS (executive information Systems) and DSS (decision support systems) vendors used to offer in the more centralized mainframe-dominated world for big, big bucks. Of course, no one's expecting Microsoft's solution to come cheap relying as it does on the pretty much the full stack.

Third: There is a 64-bit version of Office 12 planned, to ship sometime after the 32-bit version. While many question the need for 64-bit desktop apps, some spreadsheet jockeys can tell you that Excel runs out of gas in 32-bits when they run complex pivot tables.

Both high-performance spreadsheet modeling and apps requiring manipulation of rich multimedia data types could benefit big time from 64-bitness at the desktop, observers say.

Fourth: Less surprisingly, last month Microsoft acknowledged plans for 64-bit versions of SharePoint Portal Server and Windows SharePoint Services to roll ashore with "the Office 12 wave." Also under consideration is a possible Excel/SharePoint Server converged server, sources have said. Also on tap in among planned "Office Servers" will be an InfoPath server.

Fifth: The company is working to converge Content Management Server and SharePoint Portal Server capabilities into a single set of "server systems."

Microsoft hopes that new server-based functionality tapped by desktop apps will spur upgrades and generate excitement around its cash-cow Office franchise.