Science and technology news blog

According to APC magazine, Microsoft’s Office For Mac 2008 has moved from alpha to private beta. There’s still no word on when the public betas will arrive, but APC has a few screenshots of the new user interface design.Although the Mac version of Office will not use the Ribbon interface found in the new Office 2207 for Windows, the interface design in Office For Mac is clearly striving for the same goals — exposing previous hidden tools and making complex tasks simpler.

Microsoft is staging the long-awaited coming-out party for its IP telephony software with an announcement that the public beta release of Office Communications Server 2007, Microsoft’s voice over IP and unified communications server, and Office Communicator 2007, Microsoft’s unified communications client, will be available to testers later this month.

The announcement will be made by Jeff Raikes, president of Microsoft’s Business Division, during a keynote address Wednesday morning at the VoiceCon trade show in Orlando, Fla.

The launch of the new software puts Microsoft head to head with other companies selling IP telephony and unified communications software to large companies. As the No. 1 supplier of desktop software to most businesses around the world, Microsoft will likely be a formidable competitor not only to the traditional telephony players, such as Avaya, but also to its longtime partner and more recent rival Cisco Systems.

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Not to be outdone by their Windows counterparts at CES, Microsoft’s Macintosh Business Unit announced today at Macworld the release of a universal version of Office designed to run on both Power-PC and Intel-based Macs. Set for release in the second half of 2007, Office 2008 for Mac promises to implement new tools and introduce an Apple-centric look and feel, while retaining the program’s existing Windows-sharing capabilities.

Like the recently-introduced Office 2007 for Windows, Office 2008 will feature Office Art 2.0, a graphics engine that allows users to add professional level graphics with ease. Mac users will also receive their own, unique version of Office 2007’s popular user-friendly interface, Ribbon. Designed with Apple users is mind Elements attempts to make Office’s tools more easily discoverable by users, taking full advantage of Mac-specific technologies, and maintaining a look and feel familiar to its users.

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Over the past few years, the concept of Business Process Management has come into vogue as a method for tying together the processes and software programs used throughout an enterprise. There are now a number of companies offering BPM software, including some smaller developers that offer BPM-specific programs, as well as a few power-players of the software industry who have recently stepped into the ring.

As BPM solutions become more widely used, it’s helpful to take a step back and ask some of the experts where they see BPM headed.

Is BPM just another fad in the world of business? Or, is it truly an enabling technology that can help companies improve efficiency and the bottom line? And, should companies not already implementing BPM jump on the bandwagon or sit back and wait?

Still a Niche Domain

For those not yet familiar with BPM, it may help first to understand that one of the main goals of BPM software is to enable managers to save time and money by identifying processes that can be automated or integrated throughout the organization. For example, BPM products can help business managers analyze production processes and shipping schedules to keep them in line with sales forecasts and other aspects of enterprise resource planning.

“The BPM concept by itself is not earthshakingly new,” explains Lubor Ptacek, director of product marketing for EMC’s software group. “It has been used over the last 20 years as businesses started to automate their business processes.” The big difference he sees is that business process management is no longer hard-wired to a single software product.

With regard to the different BPM solutions that are currently available, Ptacek points out that, “BPM still is a niche domain. The players are not yet well known.” Although, he expects this to change drastically over the next year. Ptacek also predicts that BPM software will gradually cease to be positioned as a unique category of products, as the concept of business process management becomes more integrated into the overall business infrastructure.

Novell has just announced it will bundle support and training offerings with its market leading SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, making it easier than ever for small and medium-sized businesses to now leverage the power of Linux. With this new offering, Novell solution provider partners, the company’s primary channel to the mid-market, can now deliver a comprehensive Linux solution, including 24×7 support and online assistance, to their customers. . Unlike other Linux distributors, Novell is the only company to provide free training as part of a complete solution. With this offering, customers can get the best engineered Linux in the market as well as the training needed to effectively implement and maintain their environment. Backed by one of the largest Linux technical support teams in the industry, customers gain all the core services they need to leverage Linux in a simple, supported package.

“We are seeing a growing interest in Linux by small and medium size businesses,” said Jodi Honore, vice president, vendor management, Ingram Micro Inc. “With an offering that is easy to explain, deliver and support, solution providers, previously apprehensive of taking on a new operating system, can now build their Linux practice and gain new customers.” (more…)

IBM’s newly announced version of Sametime, which enables enterprises to collaborate, integrates key
accepted free instant messaging applications with its communications. The package that facilitates web conferencing and online sharing or editing of documents now hopes to pack the rather diminutive instant messenger in its effort to woo companies that seek to build joint Web services programs.

Besides including a new applications development platform for what IBM believes serves “real-time collaboration” the company’s efforts to tie Sametime 7.5 with several of the more known free IM applications came as a surprise. Lotus officials believe that Sametime’s near 15 million users stand to benefit by free IM software as the package’s overall reach is vastly extended.

The IM partners in Sametime 7.5 include America Online and Yahoo, besides hope to add the newer Google Talk in the near future. Besides these, firms like Avaya, Polycom, Nortel, Siemens, Premiere Global Services and Tandberg are building direct links into the package. In allowing publicly accessible tools to be used at the same time as private enterprise IM systems, Lotus is preventing any compromise of security by using SIP (session initiation protocol) technology. (more…)

“The company still has plenty of work to do in determining what technology will be made widely available in the new standard,” said Forrester Research senior analyst Kyle McNabb. “Most likely they will move aggressively, given the competition from OASIS and OpenDocument.”

Faced with increasing pressure from the public and private sector regarding long-term access to information, Microsoft is opening its Office file formats, seeking to make the technology an international standard.

The company’s submission to the global standards organization ECMA International, backed by companies including Apple, Intel , and Toshiba , would establish Microsoft’s Office Open XML (Extensible Markup Language) as a standard document format technology available to all.

Microsoft has designed the Open XML formats for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint to provide the vast number of Office customers with assurance that they can store and manage data for years to come without fear of putting all of their eggs one proprietary basket. (more…)

While there are of course proponents and detractors on both side of the line, many analysts have identified open-source software and nonproprietary formats as building up strong momentum against Redmond. But the open-source movement does have legitimate detractors.

While Microsoft has had some 20 years to make Office what it is today, most industry analysts say that new open-source contenders, such as OpenOffice, measure up reasonably well against Redmond’s suite. But they also say that while these suites do have most of the features of Microsoft Office, they lack certain advanced capabilities that make all the difference.

Clearly, Microsoft continues to define the office space and likely will dominate office software for the foreseeable future. But an interesting question to ask is whether a group of volunteers—however large—can ever hope to measure up against Microsoft’s millions of dollars. Gates and crew have poured countless programmer hours into Office over the past 20 years, while OpenOffice and other alternative product groups consist almost entirely of volunteers. Is the idea so far-fetched that a group of volunteers can compete successfully with Microsoft? (more…)