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Microsoft Office News
Jan 24 2005-That's not a very attention grabbing headline, but good enough to get the point across. Microsoft Elixir, is a new project they are working on, in hopes of boosting upgrades of their Office suite.
Microsoft is a big business, and one part of that big business is getting people to upgrade to the latest and greatest software release. But, if you are like most places, once the software is stable and does everything you want it to, why would people really want to upgrade just to get the new bells and whistles. This is Microsoft's problem, and Elixir is one of the ways they are going to deal with it.
Microsoft has been using the code named Elixir internally for awhile now, in this case they are using Outlook as a means for their sales force to access their CRM software from Siebel. Microsoft says it could link to most CRM software packages in the same way. This helps tie Office into more companies and causes them to upgrade, beacuse it only works with Office 2003, the latest version of their Office suite. Expect this code to be available later this year.
Related articles from other news sites:
Microsoft turns to Elixir for Office boost Convincing businesses to upgrade to new versions of Office is a perennial challenge for Microsoft, but the company hopes a new Elixir might speed things up.
An effort, code-named Project Elixir, will take shape later this year as a way to promote Microsoft's Outlook e-mail and contact program, with some additional fields, as a tool for viewing customer relationship data. Eventually, the plan could help the software giant elbow its way further into the customer relationship management market, where Siebel Systems, Oracle and SAP dominate.
Microsoft Office To Offer CRM Migration Microsoft has announced that it will be offering product migration from Microsoft Outlook with Business Contact Manager to Microsoft CRM for the first time when it rolls out the next edition of Microsoft Office -- an entire year away.
The next version of Office will be available in late 2005, the company says.
While it is not likely that this upcoming overhaul of Office will be as extensive as last October's upgrade, the application will incorporate a number of improvements, including greater connectivity to Microsoft's CRM application, according to the company.
Microsoft wants servers to drive Office sales
Microsoft wants to create closer ties between its Office desktop software and its server applications in the next version of Office, hoping customers will upgrade their copies of the dominant desktop software suite.
Office 12, the provisional name of the next major upgrade of the productivity software suite, will have closer links between desktop applications, such as Word and Excel, and Microsoft's server software, a company representative said on Thursday. The company is also looking to create more specialized editions of Office that address specific customers, such as small businesses or schools, and to continue the use of XML for file formats, according to representatives.
Microsoft Releases First Service Pack for Office 2003 Microsoft Corp. on Tuesday released the first service pack for Office 2003, which is largely a collection of security and bug fixes for the entire Microsoft Office System but also contains some new feature enhancements for Microsoft Office OneNote 2003 and Microsoft Office InfoPath 2003.
Office Service Pack 1 (SP1), available for download here, also will be available on CD in early September at a fee that covers postage and packaging. The English client download is about 18MB, and the administrator version is 74MB.
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