He recently agreed to speak with VARBusiness senior writer Carolyn A. April about his goals for Office System and the opportunity he sees for partners. For more of the interview, go to www.varbusiness.com.
VB: What are the top three technical advances?
Raikes: One of them is the flexible smart client built into Office and its XML advances; the second would be its evolutionary collaboration and messaging infrastructure; and third its mainstream core infrastructure and tools like Information Rights Management for protecting intellectual capital. XML enables two powerful opportunities for partners: one being building solutions for customers that enable better interoperability between front- and back-end systems, and the other as the enabling technology for business Web services.
VB: How can partners take advantage of these gains?
Raikes: Partners are critical for many of our customers to get the full value out of their Microsoft Office System investment and deployment. Due to its depth and breadth of XML support, Office System presents incredible opportunities for partners to build solutions on top of it based entirely on the partner's specific value offering and expertise. [For example], Xerox is creating a solution for Continental Airlines on the XML Smart Documents that makes it easier to create, approve and distribute maintenance updates.
Partners will also play a critical role in delivering end-to-end solutions to customers by integrating, configuring and customizing our Office Solution Accelerators. These are integrated sets of software components, templates and architectural guidance designed to solve specific business problems. Additionally, we are providing key desktop deployment investment via tools, people and programs to assist our partners in migrating customers to the new Office System.
VB: How closely is Microsoft tying the Office System sales to the migration push around Exchange 2003?
Raikes: Microsoft Office System helps our customers take advantage of the best Microsoft has to offer, such as the security and stability improvements in our newer Windows and Exchange releases. It's about extending the value of our customers' existing technology investments and helping them get the most out of the work they've put into all of the information they've created and the relationships they've built.
VB: Can you put a dollar amount on the partner opportunity around Office System?
Raikes: Analysts estimate the market for business intelligence, collaboration, work management and business-process solutions that could be addressed by partners building Office System-based solutions to grow to $117 billion annually by 2006.
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