Office 2003: The Year in Review
It’s funny when those “Year in Review” pieces roll on TV around now, how bizarre seems it to me that the annual calendar change makes us look back at the year about to go by. It never ceases to amaze me either how many of the things you forget happened during the year too! (“Oh I remember that one” or “Did he really die just this year?”)
So I figure that I would offer a look back at the year in review for Microsoft Office; don’t expect any revelations; just my take on where the year went for our beloved box of apps...
Of course this year’s big event was the new release that takes its name from the calendar year which already is about to leave me feeling a little nostalgic (or is the term ‘legacy’?). Yeah, sure they could have named it Office XP2 but I guess the marketing folks had a plan... too bad that one’s obsolete in a few hours. ;-s
Sidebar: I wished they would have just enabled all the SKUs with XML and called it “Microsoft Office – The XML Version”
But regardless of the name, the rev of Office released in 2003 is the greatest incarnation of it we have seen to date. Well received, even the skeptics gave the product its acclaim for its inclusion of XML standards, new solution types, and broader, truer integration as a platform vs. being just another re-hashed flavor of the productivity suite.
Developers have begun to include Office in solutions more so with this release because of Visual Studio Tools for Office and the availability of the PIAs, finally allowing ‘pro’ developers to craft projects directly from VS.NET.
InfoPath and SharePoint joined the ‘family’, bringing both new excitement and a new wave of opportunities for solving problems.
All is good... well not totally... Here at the year end is Office is not quite basking in the limelight just as I would like it. Although there are still millions of people out there creating Office-based solutions, the term ‘legacy’ gets tossed about freely and we are miles away from mass adoption of the new release. While we wait, the Office community continues to dwindle; we have lost our magazines and conferences once dedicated to purely to ‘us’, becoming footnotes and mentionables to other technologies that have gained momentum.
So 2003 was good for Office, but not great. 2004… now that is going to be the story. No… there is no new release, but service releases and upgrades will coincide with more opportunities to work with the new stuff. VS.Whidbey will give us an even better/tighter/more compelling story and we will win/welcome VS programmers to our community. The story will be good...
Stay tuned... I may have just declared 2004 as the year of Office 2003... now if we could just see about that name ;-s
Have a Happy New Year and thanks for reading :)