The 2007 Microsoft Office system packaging is built to enable the New World of Work
Introduction to Office 12
Microsoft strongly believes that amplifying people00 individual impact is the key to amplifying business success 00from innovating new products and services, to driving profitable customer relationships, to forming closer bonds with partners, to running more efficient operations and eliminating excess costs. The most successful organizations will continue to invest in their people by giving them the right tools to deal with information, the right training, and a work environment that supports how they get their job done with today's tools. This becomes increasingly important as the work environment evolves.
Trends Shaping the 00ew World of Work00/b>
A number of global trends are shaping a new world of work that continues to create new opportunities and challenges for organizations and their people. This global, economic transformation is accelerating the move toward an information-based economy. Within that economy, our customers tell us that there are a number of trends that are changing how organizations will do business, and how people within those organizations will work. Specifically, we are hearing about the following areas:
One World of Business. Most enterprises today are either operating globally or facing global competition. As traditional barriers to the flow of goods, capital and labor dissolve, collaboration of all sorts is becoming more prevalent. For example, teams increasingly work across all manner of organizational and geographic boundaries. Outsourcing of call centers, accounting and many other business processes is on the rise, as is telecommuting. An estimated 23.5 million U.S. employees now work primarily from home 00more than double the number who did so in 1997. These trends demand more flexible IT capabilities and practices as well as more robust security for intellectual assets.
The Transparent Organization. Government regulation, combined with increasing vigilance by shareholders, customers and empowered consumer groups, is compelling businesses to operate at unprecedented levels of visibility while maintaining control over proprietary information. The 00lattening00 of organizations has made information flow easy, rendering intellectual property susceptible to outside influences.
Always on, always connected. Seamless and pervasive wireless networks and more powerful mobile devices make access easy, but prioritization is increasingly difficult as workers try to balance competing demands on their personal and professional lives. Also, while the growth of the Internet, mobile devices and networks have enabled many organizations to overcome the obstacles of connecting their people and information, finding the right information and expertise to make efficient decisions continues to be a challenge.
The Strategic Approach
To help address the opportunities and needs of the evolving workplace, Microsoft, and the Microsoft Business Division in particular, delivers innovative software solutions that amplify the impact that people have. Our goal is to deliver a digital work style - comprising desktop applications, servers, software services, and solutions - that uniquely addresses the full spectrum of people00 daily activities to drive organizational success, from structured business processes to ad hoc productivity activities. This entails providing software solutions that help people drive business processes, create and consume information, work with one another, and find the information that they need to gain insight, make decisions and take action. It is this focus on people, and how people work, that uniquely positions Microsoft to meet their needs.
The Next Wave of Innovation
Our teams are diligently building upon the successful 2003 release of the Microsoft Office system to deliver even more capabilities to people and organizations around the world in the 2007 Microsoft Office system release, due in the second half of 2006. The 2007 Microsoft Office system includes transformational changes to what people often think of as 00raditional Microsoft Office applications,00such as a completely redesigned user interface and the ability to create content that has much greater impact with far less work 00essentially enabling people to get better results faster. The 2007 Microsoft Office system also includes innovative servers and services that will enable new organizational solutions based on collaboration, enterprise content management, and business intelligence. It00 the combination of these areas of investment that make this the business-critical information work platform for organizations of all sizes. This platform is built to address the opportunities and challenges of the New World of Work.
In one world of business, where teams are challenged not only to work across time and geography, but also with customers and partners outside their organizations, the 2007 Microsoft Office system will enable people to work across boundaries by building on our industry leading collaboration platform. This will foster closer connections with customers and partners and drive internal innovation. Specific investment examples include:
Working together in real time - integrated communications that bring together instant messaging, video conferencing, telephony and virtual meetings
Keeping global teams in sync - team workspaces that work within organizations (such as with Windows SharePoint Services) as well as across organizational boundaries (such as with Groove and taking WSS document libraries offline)
Sharing information across organizations - Delivering collaborative portals that can work at a team or organization-wide level to pull together various work spaces; including improved support for new collaboration technologies like RSS, Weblogs and Wikis for internal collaboration
Process-centric collaboration - Capabilities such as contextual presence and identity that can be surfaced through business applications as well as across Microsoft Office solutions so that people can collaborate from within their business processes
With increased transparency driving new regulatory requirements and intellectual property risks, the 2007 Microsoft Office system will enable people to make the most of enterprise content, control their content, and streamline business processes. This will enable organizations to have greater operational efficiency while reducing information risk. Specific investment examples include:
Broadcasting information to large groups - Investments in portal solutions, such as SPS and Content Management Server (CMS), that support a more holistic approach to disseminating information inside as well as outside the organization
Regulatory compliance - Investments in enterprise content management that works the way that people do within organizations, empowering them, yet enabling IT to maintain control, including email and folder policies, content types, and workflow investments
Process inefficiencies - New enterprise content management solutions and business process automation capabilities that drive consistent action in organizations and reduce inefficiencies
Intellectual property protection - Investments in digital rights management to reduce the risk of information leaving the organization, including protection of email, documents, and document libraries
Aligning projects and actions across organizations - Investments in project management solutions that scale for the enterprise and integrate with existing enterprise applications, but are easy to use
Finally, in an always on, always connected world where information and people are accessible 24/7, the 2007 Microsoft Office system will provide streamlined access to information, greater information visibility, and better ability to prioritize time and tasks. This will enable people to have more efficient access to the information that they need for informed decisions.
Prioritization - Investments to help with time and task management by better integrating tasks into mail and calendaring and integrating tasks between solutions (Outlook, SharePoint, Project, OneNote)
Consuming information quickly - Investments to help people consume larger quantities of information more quickly through easier data visualization in analysis tools like Excel
Information overload - Enhanced search capabilities to help people find the information that they need within the organization, both across SharePoint Portal Services (SPS) and legacy systems
Information underload 00/b> Investments in business performance management that expose key corporate data and tie it to strategic initiatives through scorecarding solutions that align structured and unstructured content
Finding People - Search interface and active directory enhancements that provide easy access to expertise within organizations
These investments, and more, will be key to enabling a digital work style that meets the needs of people and organizations both in the near term and the future. In addition, Microsoft00 strong focus on delivering solutions that revolve around people encompasses more than just Office, and extends throughout Microsoft Business Division as well as other divisions. As an example, Microsoft builds on this strategy through Microsoft Dynamics庐, a line of financial, customer and supply chain management solutions developed by the Microsoft Business Solutions group. Working in unison with customers and partners, Microsoft Business Solutions is delivering role-based, integrated software that works like the individuals throughout the organizations do and help complete the spectrum of work that people do across both structured to unstructured activities. These products and services are delivered through a worldwide partner channel that provides local and industry expertise with the personalized, solid Microsoft relationship that customers require.
Solutions that Evolve with the Changing Workforce
In examining the trends that workers are facing today and will face tomorrow, we all need to stay aware of how the workforce is evolving. As workforce demographics change, businesses will be challenged to retain productive older employees as well as to develop the talents of younger 00etGen00 workers 00groups with vastly different expectations of work and technology. As the worker population shrinks in many parts of the world, organizations will have to find new ways to attract and retain the best and brightest workers, maximize their productivity and equip them to accomplish more with fewer resources.
These workers are growing up in what many today are calling a Digital Lifestyle. They have grown up in an age of computers and the Internet, and will want to join companies that have embraced a digital work style that mirrors the lifestyle they are used to 00one that includes the latest and greatest tools. They are much more collaborative, have high expectations about the information available to them, and are used to multi-tasking. At the same time, they will be even more susceptible to pressures brought on by the convergence of their digital work style and digital lifestyle - feeling as if they never can leave the office behind.
Microsoft00
objective is to give organizations and individuals the tools to deal
effectively with these trends and pressures. We are focused on enabling
a digital work style and lifestyle that lets people more fully
control and prioritize what they do, and when, so can have greater impact
while they work and at the same time be more free to enjoy the rest
of their time.
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