Introduction

Microsoft Office presents some of the most important licensing and purchasing decisions for organizations. Office is a line of PC application suites aimed at business users. Office makes up a major part of the software license budget in many organizations, so organizations have to weigh their purchase options carefully to minimize license costs while respecting budgeting and financing constraints. Office also presents some of the most difficult problems for license compliance, particularly when deployed to large numbers of users, so organizations must carefully weigh compliance requirements against license costs.

The Office Challenge

With Office 2010, the latest version, Office suites include combinations of the following applications:

• Outlook (e-mail, calendar, and contacts)
• Word (document creation)
• Excel (spreadsheet)
• PowerPoint (slide presentation)
• OneNote (note-taking and collaboration)
• Publisher (small-business document publishing)
• Business Contact Manager