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GIVEN THE ERUPTION of hype that usually accompanies Microsoft launches, the arrival of Office 2000 in June was a decidedly low-key event. There were no Rolling Stones tie-ins, no TV commercials, no magazine ad blitzes, and precious few Bill Gates photo ops.
This hasn't been a good year for the company's PR department, and that may explain better than anything this year's quiet. The ongoing antitrust battle with the U.S. Justice Department, once widely regarded as a no-brainer for Microsoft lawyers, appears to have swung heavily against the Redmond, Washington, company, and Silicon Valley pundits are now seriously considering the possibility that a court order could break the company up, AT&T-style, sometime in the near future.
That said, Microsoft's bottom line is healthier than ever, and the release of a new version of Office means a new flood of dollars for both Microsoft itself and the hundreds of companies -- hardware manufacturers, tech-support firms and, of course, publishers -- that rely on Gates & Co. for a good chunk of their own cash flow.
"Office 2000 is probably the biggest event of the year for us," says Frank Tomaino, marketing manager for Prentice Hall Canada. "We're anticipating a much bigger release than we've seen for some time."
It's a widespread sentiment.
"We're releasing more than 50 books to coincide with Office 2000," says John Kilcullen, Chairman and CEO of IDG Books Worldwide. "It's an enormous opportunity for us, and a chance to revise all our proven bestsellers. More than half our business revolves around Microsoft products, and Office represents well over half of our titles for this season."
For the uninitiated, Office is the most popular suite of its kind: a collection of productivity applications made up of Word (word processing), Excel (spreadsheet), Outlook (calendar and e-mail), and Powerpoint (presentations), plus, depending on the specific bundle, Access (database), Publisher (page layout), FrontPage (web site design), and PhotoDraw (image editing).
For years, Microsoft has promoted Office as a tightly integrated toolset: a package that allows users to analyze data, plan meetings, write letters, send memos, and so on without all the hassle that would normally go along with learning to use five programs at once. With Office, it's supposed to be easy to drop spreadsheet...