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COMPUTERGRAM INTERNATIONAL: JUNE 08 1999
SECTION: COMBINED ISSUE
+ Microsoft Makes Office 2000 Hostable by ISPs
Microsoft Corp officially launched Office 2000 yesterday,
promising to have it in the shops by Thursday. Some 15m
licenses have already been sold to corporate customers. Along
with the launch of the widely previewed package, Microsoft said
it had signed agreements with internet service providers
Concentric Network Corp, Verio Inc, InterLand Inc and AIS Inc,
who will offer web collaboration services based around the new
software.
Speaking at the launch in San Francisco, Microsoft president
Steve Ballmer emphasized the web capabilities of the new
version, including the use of HTML as a document format. As
well as Word, PowerPoint, Excel and the Outlook mail program,
Office 2000 now also includes the FrontPage web page
development tool, PhotoDraw, Publisher, and a set of Small
Business Tools applications. There are five suite options:
Premium, Professional, Small Business, Standard and Developer.
The price of the Premium edition is $399 for upgrades, $799
new.
The hosting firms will use Microsoft's new Office Server and
FrontPage Server Extensions technology, enabling users - now
called "knowledge workers" by Microsoft - to publish documents
directly to Web sites hosted by ISPs, and then conduct in-line
discussions within documents and subscribe to document change
notifications.
Users shouldn't hold their breaths for a Linux version of
Office 2000. Steve Ballmer offered a blunt "no" as an answer to
the questioner who asked if porting was underway. Microsoft
has sold around 100m Office licenses in total, 50m of them
Office 97, sold within the last twelve months.