While Microsoft Office remains the cash cow feeding Group VP Jeff Raikes' Productivity and Business Services Group, the unit is working on alternative ways to broaden its revenue base in the coming decade.

How? One way is by developing new deliverables based on a combination of existing products, plus add-on services, methodologies and blueprints. Microsoft calls these combination bundles "solution accelerators."

Peter Rinearson — corporate VP in charge of the new-markets team within the information worker solutions group (IWSG) — is the appointed overseer of this initiative. Rinearson, who joined Microsoft last summer, ran a couple software companies, co-authored "The Road Ahead" with Chairman Bill Gates and won a Pulitzer Prize, all before he was 30.

"A solution is a product or products, plus best-practices knowledge," Rinearson explains.

Rinearson's team members are working on two types of solution accelerators: personal and organizational. Personal solution accelerators are aimed at individual employees within an organization; organizational accelerators are more comprehensive, partner-enabled offerings designed to be rolled out to an entire company.

Other product teams at Microsoft already are shipping a number of similar solutions and accelerators. There are accelerators for financial services, RosettaNet, HIPAA and business intelligence, among other areas.

See the Growing List of Microsoft's Solutions and Accelerators Here

But the IWSG team announced its first accelerator in January: the Six Sigma Accelerator. The manufacturing-oriented Six Sigma Accelerator, which Microsoft said would ship in May, builds on top of Microsoft Project Professional and Microsoft Project Server.

Play Catch Up on the Six Sigma Accelerator Here

The IWSG team is working on more accelerators, due to launch over the next few months.

One, called the Office Media Accelerator, is aimed at helping customers and third-party reseller partners deploy collaborative solutions based on Microsoft's Windows Media 9 Series, SharePoint Portal Server and Office 2003 Enterprise edition, say sources. The goal of this accelerator is to increase the ways that Office System 2003 customers can take advantage of streaming audio and video.

Another integration accelerator, tentatively called the Office Business Process Integration Accelerator (OBPIA), is also due out some time soon, sources claim. The alleged goal of OBPIA is to allow information workers to connect more seamlessly from their favorite desktop programs to enterprise business processes. Some speculate that OBPIA will build on top of Word, Excel, BizTalk, SharePoint Team Services and XML Web services.

Microsoft execs say some type of real-time collaborations accelerator is in the hopper, too.

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A Microsoft spokeswoman said the company declined to comment on unannounced products.

Rinearson says that, at least so far, Microsoft's plan is to make solutions available for free.

With solution accelerators, he explains, "the primary business model is
to create a need for (Microsoft) features and products," as opposed to generating revenues directly.

Rinearson says he is categorizing his unit's solutions as either solution accelerators or integration accelerators. Integration accelerators are horizontal, building directly on top of Microsoft products and technologies. Solution accelerators are more vertically focused and build on top of integration accelerators.

Microsoft is building solution accelerators in four areas: finance, operations, sales and marketing, and human resources. Partners provide the vertical integration code and services on top of these accelerators, in Microsoft's world view.