Will Microsoft Office never let us rest?

See correction below

It’s taken months to work the kinks out, but now you’ve got your users humming along on Office XP backed up by Windows 2000 Server and Active Directory. So what happens? Redmond goes and starts trumpeting the release of Office 2003. Seems as though we just get the wrinkles worked out of one version of Office, and Microsoft insists we absolutely can’t live without the next one.

Fortunately, no one has to start sweating quite yet; Microsoft has released no tangible information on Office 2003 other than new features. No pricing and only a vague “second half of 2003” ship date, which usually means more than we think it’s worth and about a minute before 2004. And in another strange move, Microsoft hasn’t really added any new software to sweeten the offer. Office 2003 will be composed of the same basic applications as its previous incarnations, namely Access 2003, Excel 2003, Outlook 2003, PowerPoint 2003, and Word 2003.

In fact, the company has actually taken away some functionality in that FrontPage 2003 will no longer be made available as part of a suite purchase but is instead relegated to standalone status only, similar to Project and Visio. Many of us were expecting OneNote 2003, a handwriting-recognition note-taker and organizer for Microsoft’s Tablet PC version of Windows XP, to be made part of Office 2003, but no-go there either.

So what do you get? Well, first a bit of a headache deciding which suite version is appropriate because there are six of them now. First there’s Office Basic Edition 2003, which will only come installed with a new PC purchase.

Then you’ve got Office Standard Edition 2003, which is what you’ll find on the shelf at CompUSA along with Office Professional Edition 2003. The difference between the two is that Professional will come with Publisher 2003, Business Contact Manager 2003, and the “professional” versions (read “more XML-capable”) of Word, Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint, and Access. Both these versions will not only be available retail, but through all the other channels as well. So will Office Small Business Edition 2003, which includes everything that Office Professional Edition 2003 has except the upgraded version of Word. Tossed in after all this is Office Student and Teacher Edition 2003, which includes only the Big Four applications available via retail or academic license.

Last, there’s the heavyweight of course, which is Office Professional Enterprise Edition 2003. This has all the meat found in the Professional Edition along with “professional” versions of all the core applications as well as Microsoft’s InfoPath XML-based electronic forms-creation and database client software. This one, however, will only be available via corporate or academic volume licensing. No pricing for any of these yet, but if an open license of corporate-edition Office XP costs about $65,000 for 100 users today, you can bet this will cost a good chunk more.

If you’re wondering where the benefit of Office 2003’s new features are for small and midsize businesses, you’re not alone. I don’t see them either. Don’t get me wrong, Office 2003 has some very cool and potentially highly useful features available all revolving around its use of XML. Office 2003 will use custom XML schemas to enhance Word and Excel functionality as well as allow companies to define their own schemas and data formats. Of course, even though it’s XML, only Office applications will be able to read these files, so while you’ll get more functionality within Office, Microsoft won’t lose the proprietary advantage it’s enjoyed with .DOC and XLS file formats. Office 2003’s upgraded database connectivity is pretty much an extension of its new XML muscle into SQL Server, although it supposedly supports the other big relational databases as well.

As you can see, all this sounds great for companies that can afford the human resources to customize Office 2003 to this depth. Small businesses, however, won’t be able to realize these benefits because it will simply be too expensive for them to implement. They’ll be able to benefit more from Outlook’s new integration with Business Contact Manager, but that’s about it.

The question is, will that be enough to push small business customers away from a still-recent upgrade to Office XP? Frankly, I don’t think so. Even with Redmond’s Open License strong arm tactics, you can expect Office 2003 to remain in the Fortune 1000 until well into 2004, and for many into 2005.

Correction

In this column, the list of what is included in Microsoft Office Professional Edition 2003 was originally incorrect.