Comments on: Microsoft pretties Office for business apps

Microsoft plans to release software geared to help third parties integrate Outlook, other Office components.

[Captain_Spock]

Musical Chairs!

While "Microsoft and SAP have a joint development project, called Duet, which makes Office the access point to SAP data and business process. For example, a person could send out an offer letter for employment from Word and draw information from a specialized human resources application.

With Office Business Applications, Microsoft intends to get more software companies and corporate developers to do similar work...."; this collaboration with SAP can certainly be seen as reminiscent to "dancing the musical chairs" as "On May 11, 2006, IBM announced two new solutions designed to help organizations simplify integration with SAP®: IBM Lotus Notes Access for SAP, and IBM Lotus Workplace for SAP Software. Significant offerings in themselves, they?re also notable as the first two products to emerge from IBM?s ?Project Harmony? initiative ? which, as the name suggests, is all about helping disparate enterprise applications make beautiful music together.

?In a nutshell, Project Harmony is focused on helping customers get more value from their existing application investments, by providing an SOA front end that simplifies integration between those investments,? says Larry Bowden, Vice President, IBM Workplace Composite Products. ?The benefits of "Project Harmony" can be realized now as the IBM solutions work with a customer's existing levels of SAP and other applications without requiring upgrades.... ?

http://www-306.ibm.com/software/swnews/swnews.nsf/n/jmme6q5jgb?OpenDocument&Site=lotus

Which companies get the market's nod for Front Office applications as "a common entry point into back-end business applications" is left to be seen.

[ppgreat]

Run Away! Run Away!

Get in bed with Microsoft and prepared to be screwed in the worst
possible way. Stop the insanity and don't buy this junk! Anyone
whose job is not dependent on it will tell you that Sharepoint is the
biggest dog to come down the block since Bob.

[catch23]

My job is not dependent on it

and I'll tell you your full of crap. Sharepoint has its good points and its bad points, just like the offerings from every other vendor. In my case, the cost was not worth it; your mileage may vary.
Your ignorance, however, should lead to a predictable end; Yes, I will take fries with that.

[microsoft slayer]

Big Whoopee Doo

awwww..how pretty...it's a cute monopolistic office.

[Maccess]

Making OpenOffice.org a doorway

With all of Microsoft's focus on Office "Live" and software subscription to compete with the free OpenOffice.org, it is totally missing the reason why Google is throwing hundreds of millions of dollars at OpenOffice.org.

Google looks at OpenOffice.org as the next level browser, and wants to sell the services that OpenOffice.org accesses: text search, storage, image search, storage, etc.

Microsoft is so focussed on killing the free product, that they are totally missing the revenue model behind it.