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Microsoft has been touting the concept of role-based interfaces across its ERP and CRM product lines. It seems the company is intending to take a similar tack with the next version of its Office suite, Office 14. (There will be no Office 13, our sources have been saying for some time.) With Office 14, due toward the end of the decade (by our latest count), Microsoft will offer different versions that will be tuned to different information-worker job functions, such as sales, human resources, R&D professionals, etc.
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Comments (1)
It looks like they are moving inthe right direction with the 'role based' product suites. However, typical with Office Suites are there is one application you really don't and another Office product you need but can not get in the suite. A good solution at least with the volume licening options for businesses would allow application substituitions. For example, I may want the Office Suite but not Access, why not let me substitute Visio for Access? Another idea for volume licensing is to have Word & Excel (Outlook is included with Exchange CALS so why not exclude that in the volume license suite anyway) the 'core' office suite applications, then let me pick 2-3 other apps to add to form my own suite, such as OneNote, Visio, InfoPath?I can see where this would make distribution more complicated and may create even more SKU's. But there are 6 or 7 versions of just Windows Vista being released at my last count which seems just as complicated as far as SKU's and licensing goes.
Posted by Jason Hartley | April 24, 2006 11:37 AM