Conclusions and Future Directions

The launch of Office 2003 marked the first major milestone in the Office System strategy, but not the last. Companies tracking the strategy or planning evaluation of Office System components should be aware of upcoming developments. The most important short-term developments will be Office-based solution offerings from Microsoft partners and the advent of online services tied to Office. Longer-term, the key event will be the next Office release.

Solution Accelerators, Partners Promote Smart Clients

To promote the smart client solution architecture, Microsoft has begun to create Office solution accelerators-packages of additional software and documentation designed to help enterprise customers, systems integrators, and solution providers build solutions for managing specific business processes with Office System products. These accelerators could help legitimize the smart client architecture for such solutions and drive upgrades to the components favored by Microsoft’s accelerators.