Microsoft has been holding its Office 12 cards close to the vest. But it's becoming increasingly apparent that there will be some new Office Server products in the company's next-generation office-suite line-up.

Sources close to Microsoft say that the company is well on its way to developing a server version of its desktop Excel spreadsheet product. And Microsoft has been hinting since 2003 that it is strongly considering adding a server version of its Visio charting/diagramming product to its family of Office System products.

The trade magazine CRN reported earlier this week that the Redmond company also has a server version of its InfoPath electronic-forms application on the drawing board.

Office 12 is the code name for the next major version of Microsoft's Office System client and server products. Microsoft has not released a public delivery date for Office 12, but most company watchers are expecting it to ship in the 2006+ "Longhorn wave" timeframe. Microsoft has said Office 12 won't be tied to Longhorn, however. Office 12 products also are expected to run on older versions of Windows, most likely Windows XP and Windows Server 2003.

Microsoft already offers a handful of server products under its Office System umbrella. Its current Office Servers are Content Management Server, its Web-publishing product; Exchange Server, its e-mail server; Live Communications Server, its enterprise instant-messaging product; Project Server, Microsoft's project-management offering; and SharePoint Portal Server, its team-collaboration product.

Microsoft corporate vice president Kurt DelBene oversees these products in his role as head of the Microsoft Office Server Group.

It's unclear what new features and functionality might be part of an Excel Server product. But Visio product manager Jason Bunge told Microsoft Watch last year that company officials were contemplating building a Visio Server, a la Microsoft Project Server. Bunge said such a move might be accompanied by a formal repositioning of Visio, in an attempt to officially rechristen the product as more of a "corporate intelligence" tool, than a traditional charting/diagramming one.

Microsoft declined to discuss Office 12 in any way. When asked about plans to expand its Office family, a spokeswoman issued the following statement: "Today we're focused on working hard with partners to deliver the great productivity enhancements in Microsoft Office 2003 and the existing products in the Microsoft Office System. At this point it's a little premature to speculate about what might or might not be in future versions of the Office System."

But according to sources, it's unlikely that Microsoft will position its new Excel Server or Visio Server products as part of a thin-client solution, obviating the need to run Excel or Visio on the desktop. Instead, sources said, Microsoft is expected to play up the benefits of running Excel or Visio on both the client and server, emphasizing the new collaboration possibilities such "smart client" scenarios would create.

Microsoft already is embarking on a similar "better together" strategy with the next generation of its Visual Studio tools products. When it delivers by mid-2005 its Visual Studio 2005 desktop tool suite, Microsoft also will debut the first server product from its developer division: Visual Studio 2005 Team System. Microsoft is emphasizing that these client and server Visual Studio SKUs are meant to be used together.

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The Windows team has opted to create new Windows SKUs, like the Windows Starter Edition, Windows Media Center Edition and Windows Tablet PC Edition products. Earlier this month, Microsoft officials also said they are evaluating creating versions of Windows Embedded for specific vertical markets, starting with retail.

The Information Worker unit that oversees Microsoft Office — a product that has more than 90 percent of the Windows desktop office-suite market — is facing a similar challenge.

Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates has made no bones about the company's desire to look beyond Word, PowerPoint and Excel, Access and Outlook for future growth. At the recent Microsoft Research Faculty Summit, Gates told attendees that "There's really, though, a change in terms of how we think about that Office Suite. We're moving to think about it much more in terms of team-type activity, instead of just individual activity. We're also thinking about it in terms of unlocking the wealth of information that exists inside the company.

But building new Office servers isn't the only way that Microsoft is hoping to continue to grow its Information Worker unit's revenues.

Steven Sinofsky, senior vice president in charge of Office, in late July told financial analysts attending Microsoft's annual Financial Analyst Meeting that Microsoft also is looking at creating new Office products tailored for particular international markets, citing, as an example a feature included in the Chinese versions of Office called the English writing assistant. This wizard lets users hover their mouse over a word and a pop-up appears with the word's definition, context and appropriate grammar.

(This is an edited version of articles which first appeared in the August 8, 2003 and February 2, 2004, issues of the Microsoft Watch newsletter. Want to see what other Microsoft news nuggets you might have missed? Sign up today for a free two-week trial subscription to Microsoft Watch.)