• Chart: Planned Office Solution Accelerators
• Illustration: Office Solution Accelerator for Proposals

New packages of code and documentation are available to help partners and enterprise customers build Office-based custom solutions. The Office Solution Accelerators will help partners and enterprise customers use Office 2003 client applications and servers to automate business processes such as recruiting and preparing sales proposals. However, partners will have to keep track of Microsoft's planned lineup of solution accelerators to avoid investing too much of their own effort in similar solutions.

Solution Selling Extended to Office

Similar to the Microsoft Solution Offerings introduced in 2002 to support sales of Microsoft server products, the Microsoft Office Solution Accelerators are designed to guide systems integrators, solution providers, and in-house developers in creating IT solutions that use Office applications as clients. Many accelerators aim at business processes that currently employ Office applications, such as preparing sales proposals in Word or scheduling meetings with job applicants in Outlook. (See the chart "Planned Office Solution Accelerators".)

Microsoft believes that the solutions can improve customer efficiency, shorten turnaround times, and reduce the frequency of errors in the targeted business processes. Compared to browser-based solutions, solutions that use Office 2003 applications as clients can provide a more responsive and familiar user interface, with less deployment effort than a totally custom client would require.

The accelerators can create business opportunities for service partners by providing them with prebuilt infrastructure that they can customize and incorporate into customer solutions. Microsoft also enlists partners to design the accelerators and contribute components; for example, the Office Solution Accelerator for Proposals includes contributions from PragmaTech Software, Quilogy, Sant, Wipro Technologies, and Xerox Global Services. Other service partners offering solutions based on the accelerator include Activiti, Ernst Young Technologies, Geniant, Immedient, K2IS, Shipley Associates, and Statera.

Upgrades Through Partner Solutions

The accelerators could encourage customers to move to the latest versions of Office applications. They could also spur adoption of new software that integrates with Office, particularly the team Web site add-on, Windows SharePoint Services, now available to Windows Server 2003 customers. Finally, they could encourage customers to renew Enterprise Agreements and Software Assurance (SA) agreements, which are required on the licenses of some products in each accelerator. For example, the Solution Accelerator for Proposals requires current SA coverage on InfoPath and Word 2003. (For an example of a solution and the products it features, see the illustration "Office Solution Accelerator for Proposals".) Microsoft says its Product Support Services Group will support the solution accelerators.

Even if partners don't bite on specific accelerators, the offerings can help IT architects understand how to exploit new products, such as the InfoPath forms application, or new techniques, such as development of .NET Framework applications that access the Office APIs. The accelerators will be freely downloadable, although they cannot be used in production without proper licensing.

Finally, partners who don't adopt the solution accelerators should nevertheless keep an eye on future accelerators. Because they are directly available to partners and customers, accelerators could "commoditize" particular types of solutions, making partner investments in such solutions less valuable.

For further information on the Microsoft Office Solution Accelerators, see www.microsoft.com/office/solutions/accelerators.

For an overview of Office 2003 client applications and solutions, see the Nov. 2003 Research Report, "Office System Anchors Information Worker Strategy."

For background on Microsoft's solution sales strategy, see "Integrated Solutions Push Server Software Sales" on page 10 of the Jan. 2002 Update, and "Solution Guidance Expanded" on page 13 of the Sept. 2002 Update.