Office Server Line Taking Shape

While Microsoft’s Office team has been focused on getting the Office 2007 (code-named Office 12) desktop suite out the door in late 2006, other parts of the Information Worker unit have been preparing parallel releases of many server products. A more powerful version of SharePoint Portal Server, the first appearance of a Microsoft server for Groove, and new servers for managing electronic forms and project portfolios will augment desktop productivity software with tools that enable Office users to better collaborate with each other and locate critical corporate resources or business intelligence.

(For a description of the packaging, naming, and pricing for the next version of Office, see “Office 2007 Suite Packaging Announced“.)

SharePoint Changes

The SharePoint products include Windows SharePoint Services (WSS), a Web site hosting and collaboration service of Windows Server 2003, and the SharePoint Portal Server product for corporate portals and enterprise search. (In the next release, SharePoint Portal Server will be called SharePoint Server 2007, dropping the word “Portal.”) These products are the hub of the collaboration strategy that has been the headline attraction of recent Office releases. They will see many significant changes, including enterprise content management features, a new Web design tool based on FrontPage technology, spreadsheet management, forms publishing, and a new Internet Edition.