Microsoft News Tracker

Mary Jo Foley says Microsoft Set to Reveal More Office 12 Tidbits

While Office 12, Microsoft’s next-generation desktop suite, is not expected to hit Beta 1 until later this fall, Microsoft officials are set to show off a number of its components at the Professional Developers Conference (PDC) in mid-September.

Recent PDCs have focused almost exclusively on operating system and tools futures. But this year’s will include tens of tracks aimed at Office developers and users.

Hit the PDC05 session list, search on the “Office & Sharepoint” track and you will see what she means. Since Office 12 is supposed to ship in close proximity to Vista, another PDC05 focus, it’s not a real surprise, particularly with Microsoft’s recent emphasis on Office as a development platform.

Meanwhile, Paul Thurrott reports:

Microsoft is now referring to Office 12 internally as Office Vista, leading me to wonder whether that will be the official name of the product or whether this just indicates that this is the version of Office that will ship at the same time as Windows Vista. What’s disturbing about this name, of course, is how obvious it is. If Microsoft does name Office 12 as Office Vista, then it may be the most telegraphed product name in Microsoft history. My guess–and yes, it’s only a guess–is that they will call it Office Vista. Why wouldn’t they?

And if you want to be one of the first to get your hands on the early Office 12 bits, David Boschman says:

Sign up for the first beta of Microsoft Office 12 at http://www.microsoft.com/office/preview/default.mspx.

Josh Heitzman reports that the September CTP of the Visual Studio 2005 SDK is now available for download by VSIP partners at http://www.vsipdev.com/downloads/. According to the download page:

The September CTP has added C++ Menus And Command sample, C# Services sample, C# Tool Window sample, the SDM SDK, C++ Package Reference and Updated Help Content.

If you aren’t familiar with the Visual Studio Industry Partner (VSIP) Program, details are here. Basically, it’s for ISV’s that want to integrate their tools with Visual Studio.

Scott Woodgate has the details:

We completed the “Microsoft position on ESB” document. This will go to microsoft web sites shortly and is our official position. Get it here. In short if you are looking for “ESB” we can help you; but on the other hand we believe ESB is an incomplete implementation of integration and we are price-point competitive to ESB with full integration server features.

Since Scott’s post is from August 1, this is really catching up on an older item, but it has now just caught the attention of the press. (Here too.)

At the Windows Server Division Weblog - Longhorn Server 64bit plans revealed:

We posted a Web bulletin today to let customers know that Longhorn Server running on Itanium-based servers “is designed specifically for database workloads and custom and line-of-business applications.” The bulletin goes on to state:

Windows Server roles that don’t apply to these workloads for example, fax server, Windows Media Services, Windows SharePoint Services, file and print servers, and others, won’t operate on Windows Server “Longhorn” for Itanium-based systems.
…
I haven’t seen press coverage yet, but unless reporters are busy covering the Intel/AMD legal back-and-forth, I’m sure we’ll see something. I expect tabloid reaction.

How about “MICROSOFT BACKS OFF ITANIUM SUPPORT!!!!!” ?

Hopefully folks will remember that this yera alone we’re expanding Itanium support to Visual Studio 2005, .NET Framework 2.0, and SQL Server 2005, and we have 1,600 Itanium servers in the labs for testing Longhorn Server. Windows on Itanium is here for a while.

I guess the net is that Microsoft remains committed to Itanium for Longhorn Server for specialized uses. And while not illogical, that’s less than across the board support.