Microsoft Corp told attendees at its Office Deployment Conference in New Orleans that the development and testing of Office 2000 was now complete, and that the product would reach retail channels by June 10. Volume license customers will get their hands on the product in April, said Bob Muglia, senior VP of Microsoft’s business productivity group.
Last month, Microsoft was forced to defer around $400m of revenues from its third quarter to its fourth because of a slight delay in getting Office 2000 software released to manufacturing. The revenues come from coupons Microsoft has been handing out to recent buyers of Office 97, entitling them to a free upgrade. The revenues will show up on the third quarter balance sheet as unearned, but the value won’t be recognized by Microsoft until the product actually ships.
Microsoft says it now has around 1,800 MCSP Microsoft Certified Solutions Providers – including large companies such as Unisys Corp, Wang Global, Inacom Corp and ICL Plc – trained and ready to offer Office 2000 services and products, and that independent software vendors such as Oberon Software Inc, Platinum Software Corp, Keyfile Corp and Rational Software Corp are building applications integrated into Office.
The new product includes five suite options, including the high- end Office 2000 Premium. That version includes the new 2000 versions of FrontPage, PhotoDraw, Word, Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint, Access, Publisher, Internet Explorer 5.0 and Microsoft Small Business Tools. To run it, Windows users must have at least 16Mb RAM for the operating system plus 4Mb RAM for each application which is to be run simultaneously – 8Mb for Outlook. That’s around 526Mb for a typical Premium installation. Prices were not given.
Large Microsoft customers including Lockheed Martin Electronics and Missiles, the University of Texas, JD Edwards & Co and Turner Broadcasting Sales Inc were on hand at the event to announced their plans to deploy Office 2000. Some of them had been involved in the early stages of product development through Microsoft’s Office Advisory Council. Customer input apparently led Microsoft to include a custom installation wizard in with the product, and to offer a deployment framework including tools, information, training programs and industry partners.
Office 2000 Developer has now also been released to manufacturing, and should be available in retail channels from June 10 along with the rest of the Office 2000 product line. Developer is aimed at professional developers building and deploying Office 2000 systems, and includes Office 2000 Premium, productivity tools for Visual Basic for Applications, data integration tools, deployment and management tools, and documentation and sample code.
