The strategy is about providing a bridge between desktop applications such as the Office suite and back-office enterprise applications, enabling users to interact with enterprise applications from the familiar Office environment while also enabling access to structured and unstructured data and processes from both environments.
Microsoft is touting the idea of a new class of application, Office Business Applications, that focus on complete processes and are built to reflect the way users actually work, combining structured data from enterprise line-of-business applications with unstructured data from collaborative systems, emails, documents, and so on.
For example, a sales person might want to access customer information, manage sales calls in the Microsoft Office Outlook calendar, access product experts inside their company, and make proposals as part of their day-to-day activity. Microsoft contends that business processes contained within enterprise applications do not cater for this mix of activities and are not easily modified, so a new class of applications is needed.
The Office Business Applications strategy is part of Microsoft’s multimillion-dollar People-Ready marketing program which talks about providing software that adjusts to how people work, rather than forcing them to work in the way determined by the software.
Office Business Applications are expected to be similar to the emerging enterprise SOA-based services offered by companies like SAP AG and Oracle Corp, which are designed as flexible pick and mix process-centric enterprise application services enabled via a SOA framework. The major differences will be that Office Business Applications will be tied to the Office system and combine desktop and enterprise information.
Microsoft has added Office Business Application capabilities to the 2007 Microsoft Office system in the form of OBA Services, which consist of workflow, search, a business data catalog, a new and extensible user interface, Microsoft Office Open XML Formats, and a web site and security framework. The company said they can be used to extend Microsoft Office system investments in business intelligence, unified communications and collaboration, and enterprise content management, as well as other business applications developed by ISVs or corporate developers.
OBAs should provide Microsoft’s partners with additional revenue opportunities because partners will be able to build new process-based applications, and extend existing applications enabling them to be used by a wider community of users. Companies will also be able to use them to provide users with access to enterprise applications. In that sense they serve a similar purpose to the joint Microsoft/SAP Duet applications.
Microsoft also previewed Microsoft LOBi (line-of-business interoperability) for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server, which will be a set of capabilities designed to work with Microsoft Office client applications and Office SharePoint Server 2007. The aim is to provide deep structured process integration with Office client applications so users can update transactional applications from within Microsoft Office and more securely take structured business processes and data offline. A technical preview is slated for the end of 2006.
The company also announced its intention to deliver the BizTalk Adapter Pack, a set of line-of-business application adapters to simplify connectivity between the 2007 Microsoft Office system and other applications. The integration work builds on Microsoft’s work on its Dynamics and Duet applications which are all about integrating Office with enterprise applications and processes and using Office as the interface.
The customer value of deep interoperability between Microsoft Office and business applications has been validated by Microsoft Dynamics business management solutions and products like Duet, our joint product with SAP. By building LOBi on Office SharePoint Server, we allow customers to get started today creating Office Business Applications and then grow with LOBi when it becomes available, said Lewis Levin, corporate vice president of the Office Business Applications Group at Microsoft.
