Office 2003: No Browser Required

For anyone thinking Office 2003 is just another ho-hum productivity suite upgrade, it’s time to download a trial version and start taking a long, hard look at the software’s extensibility.

As I have noted many times, Microsoft is trying to turn Office, like Windows, into a platform onto which developers and businesses build other programs or custom applications. A number of new Office features showcase this extensibility. In the recent Jupiter Research report, "Microsoft Positions Office 2003 for Enterprise Information," I explore one new, extensible feature: The Research pane.

Research pane optionally opens down the right-hand side of any Office 2003 document. Installing the software also replaces Internet Explorer’s built-in search feature with a modified version of Research pane. Through the Office Research pane, people can do Web searches using MSN and access stock quotes, translation services and online subscription-based information databases Factiva and eLibrary. My report looks at what applications or browsers business users use to access back-end corporate and Internet-located information, what applications they would like to use to access this information and whether they use or change a browser’s default search settings, among other findings. The report also reviews the potential competitive impact of the feature and makes recommendations to Microsoft’s competitors, customers and partners.

The report hinted at, but did not delve into some of the Research pane’s e-commerce capabilities, which circles back to my original point about Office 2003 extensibility. Besides supporting Extensible Markup Language (XML), one of several standards adopted for Web services, Research pane also supports Secure Socket Layer (SSL). So, in theory, a company supporting XML Web services could conduct e-commerce sales from within the Research pane. No Web browser required.

That’s exactly what Amazon.com is planning to do. In early October, about two weeks before the Office 2003 launch, Microsoft announced that Amazon.com would release something called "Amazon Research Services for Microsoft Office System" later this Fall. A free download would add Amazon.com to the Research pane options, allowing users to search for and buy books without ever leaving their Office 2003 application or opening a Web browser.

The competitive impact seems staggering (my report uses survey data to answer how much or how little) as does the potential for companies looking for other ways to reach customers. In the case of the Amazon.com feature, Microsoft reasons that someone reading a bibliography in Word could immediately open the Research pane, search for the title on Amazon.com and buy the book right then and there. So, instead of Jack Buyer scribbling down the name of that book and thinking he’ll open a Web browser later on to look for the title (he may not because the impulse will be gone), he can immediately search and purchase from within his Office 2003 document. That’s one more impulse buy for Amazon.com.

It’s this kind of business extensibility that contributed to Windows’ huge market share.

In theory, this extensibility doesn’t stop there. Microsoft is in the process of increasing the use of Smart Tags, which basically are pull-down boxes attached to information within documents. For example, an Amazon.com Smart Tag would put a squiggly line under book titles in the same bibliography. The user could click to pull down a list of informational and even e-commerce options associated with that title.

The pane concept and Smart Tags, both XML based, will be showing up in more Microsoft products. In the case of Smart Tags: At its developer conference last week, Microsoft showed off Smart Tags in the next version of Visual Studio .Net (Whidbey) for automating numerous development tasks. As for the pane, or sidebar, concept that debuted in an earlier version of Office, Microsoft has extended its use (there’s more than just one for research). MSN now also features a sidebar and one is planned for next-version-of-Windows Longhorn.

These sidebars share three things in common: Information, XML and no browser required. As Microsoft integrated the Web browser into Windows, the company is now bringing similar capabilities into its applications. One possible design avenue for the Longhorn release of products: Microsoft’s withdrawing further from the browser and browser motif in favor of the sidebar/pane for accessing information and conducting e-commerce.

Posted by Joe Wilcox at November 07, 2003 09:52 AM