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For Del Monte Foods , the San Francisco-based food manufacturer, Microsoft Corp.'s portal and office software were the foundation for a formula change management system. At Metro Vancouver , the water utility for the Vancouver, B.C. area, Microsoft's SharePoint portal-along with a partner application built on it-comprise the foundation for managing real-time trends.
There are plenty of other companies looking at Office as an enterprisewide collaboration platform, thanks largely to the pairing of Office with SharePoint. Adoption of the 2007 versions of the software-Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007 and the 2007 Microsoft Office system-is expected to grow quickly.
Framingham, Mass.-based analyst firm IDC surveyed businesses in October 2007, delving into their portal and office software plans. IDC found 45.6 percent of respondents already use-or are planning to use-SharePoint, and IDC believes most of these will evaluate MOSS 2007. More than 60 percent said Office 2007 is in their 2008 plans for office suites.
A key driver for SharePoint, says Melissa Webster, a VP at IDC, is managing all the content that information workers churn out. IDC found 57 percent of SharePoint adopters agree or strongly agree that managing content is a tremendous corporate challenge.
"The need to bring information governance and information life-cycle policies to all the content stored on team sites is a major driver," says Webster. "Compliance is one big driver, but the need to get use out of the information assets is just as important."
Office is better suited to these challenges now, says Chris Colyer, Microsoft's worldwide solutions director for manufacturing operations, because it pairs server-based collaborative functions under SharePoint with Office applications such as Excel. "With the release of Office 2007 we introduced what we call the Office Server System," Colyer says. "Office is now a platform that people build applications on."
SharePoint's role
Sam Youness, Microsoft's worldwide industry technical strategist, manufacturing operations, says the best way to...