Ballmer: Spam Control, New Office Application Categories Coming

Microsoft

In a question-and-answer session before about 5,000 IT executives here at the Gartner Symposium/ITxpo 2002, Ballmer said the company is working on spam control in MSN 8.0 that will be brought into the corporate market.

Ballmer did not detail when or how the capability will be added to Microsoft Outlook nor did he spell out the new Office application categories. However, he did say the XML (extensible markup language) capabilities that Microsoft is bringing to the table across the board represent a "big breakthrough."

Separately, Microsoft used the Symposium to issue a press release announcing the company will deliver in mid-2003 a new Microsoft Office family application code named XDocs. Pricing and packaging of the product were not released. Microsoft said the application supports XML so that a broad range of data can be collected and shared in a wide range of business scenarios across different companies.

Ballmer said XDocs means "improved collaboration capability, improved information management capability, improved ability for users to find and do what they want to do."

For example, users in Office will be able to share critical supply chain data with partners across a network, resulting in cost savings from the increased collaboration. Microsoft says the aim of XDocs is to connect XML Web services directly to information workers at their desktops.

Separately, Microsoft is working to add an improved Office service infrastructure so that users can better online help, connection to support engineers so they "can better discover and figure out how to do the things they want to do that they don't know how to get done in Office today.

"The ability people have today to really share and find information inside corporate intranets is not what most people want it to be," Ballmer said. "We recognize that we have to take it to the next level."