Steve Ballmer Kicks Off the New Microsoft Products Launch

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Microsoft's Chief Executive Officer Steve Ballmer has pronounced the business availability of the Windows Vista operating system, the 2007 release of Microsoft Office, and a host of other new product offerings designed to enable businesses to thrive in a world of instant communication, expanding information and constant change. The announcement that Windows Vista and the 2007 Microsoft Office release are available to volume licensing customers marks the beginning of the most significant product launch in company history and the first simultaneous release of Microsoft's flagship products since the joint launch of the Windows 95 operating system and Office 95 more than a decade ago. Windows Vista and the 2007 Office system will be available to consumers and organizations without volume license agreements on Jan. 30. In addition to Windows Vista and the 2007 release of Office, Ballmer discussed more than 30 new offerings for business customers.

According to Ballmer, the new versions of Windows, Office and Exchange Server 2007 are the result of an unprecedented collaboration between Microsoft and its customers. Real-life scenarios guided product development through feedback from customers who volunteered to let Microsoft watch them work in more than 1 billion user sessions. During testing, customers from around the world downloaded more than 5 million beta versions of the products and provided valuable feedback and suggestions.

Since the release of Windows 95 and Office 95, Microsoft has delivered platform advances with each major release of its two flagship products: TCP/IP in Windows 95 helped pave the way for the popularization of the Internet, for example, while wireless capabilities in Windows XP made mobile computing commonplace. New capabilities in Windows Vista and the 2007 Office system such as significant advances in graphics and pervasive support for XML and other technologies provide the framework for creating new experiences for end users. Significant server investments make the 2007 Office system a platform suited for developing business applications that will eliminate the barriers between organizations, systems, processes and information.

Ballmer has applauded the 640,000-strong worldwide partner ecosystem that has worked closely with Microsoft to prepare for the launch. More than 1,000 of the industry's largest independent software vendors have been developing and testing solutions for the 2007 Microsoft Office system, and approximately 3,000 partner solutions are in the final stages of development. In addition, more than 100,000 partner professionals in the United States have already completed training on these products, and this number is expected to grow to more than 1 million trained product experts worldwide within eight months.

Together, new Microsoft's products focus on four critical areas:
• Simplifying how people work together. From new Windows capabilities designed for mobile workers and unified messaging enabled by Exchange Server 2007 to workflow and collaboration tools in Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, the new products revolutionize the way people work in teams and on the go.
• Finding information and improving business insight.Deep platform integration and availability of new search technologies and powerful, easy-to-use business intelligence tools will help enable employees to find and use information more easily, streamlining the path from idea to execution.
• Helping protect and manage content.Advanced content management and document retention tools combined with features to better protect data confidentiality make content authoring the starting point for automated business processes and regulatory compliance.
• Increasing security and helping reduce IT costs. With enhanced security by design and by default, the new versions of Windows, the 2007 Office release and Exchange Server 2007 deliver breakthrough security features. They streamline deployment and management, helping reduce costs and enabling IT departments to focus on providing new capabilities to deliver strategic advantage.

Windows Vista and the 2007 Microsoft Office system also provide the core platform that will enable businesses to take advantage of the benefits of Internet-based software services. These products incorporate key XML and Web services technologies that will help companies tap into online services and select the mix of on-premise and hosted applications to deliver the right balance of control, convenience, cost-effectiveness, and security while helping increase productivity.

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