REDMOND, Washington (August 20, 2003) - Microsoft has now completed the core products in the new Microsoft Office System and has released all products to manufacturing, marking what Microsoft describes as a critical step in the delivery of the company's most powerful and and valuable release of Office.

The Microsoft Office System is composed of productivity programs, servers and services, and includes programs such as the Microsoft Office 2003 editions, and the 2003 versions of Microsoft Office programs such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Access, Outlook, Visio, FrontPage and Publisher. The abilities in the core products can be extended in Microsoft Office System solutions by taking advantage of the productivity-enhancing capabilities of Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal Server 2003, Microsoft Exchange Server 2003, Microsoft Office Live Meeting and the three new programs: Microsoft Office InfoPath 2003, Microsoft Office Live Communications Server 2003 and Microsoft Office OneNote 2003.

The Microsoft Office System is the result of a particularly large beta test. More than 600 000 beta testers - approximately three times the participants in previous beta tests - provided Microsoft with detailed feedback over the past year, allowing the company to develop what it claims to be its most innovative and stable Office products to date.

Customers that have started to adopt the new Microsoft Office System are apparently already experiencing increased productivity through better access to their information and improved collaboration capabilities. Microsemi, a semiconductor manufacturer, implemented an XML-based product catalog for 3 000 complex technical product datasheet documents using the Microsoft Office System.

"We chose a Microsoft Office System solution composed of InfoPath 2003, Office 2003 and SharePoint Portal Server 2003 to help us convert our product datasheets from static, formatted documents into XML, which allows us to represent all content as logical data, separate from formatting," said Mark Stanley, Corporate IT Manager at Microsemi. "We anticipate this Microsoft Office System solution will cut our datasheet production processes and costs significantly, allowing us to better respond to customer needs."

The release of the Microsoft Office System represents an evolution from stand-alone desktop applications to an integrated, comprehensive tool set that more easily connects people, information and business processes to enhance individual, team and organizational productivity. The familiar Office programs, combined with built-in support for industry standards such as Extensible Markup Language (XML), better enable individuals and businesses to meet their evolving information work challenges.

"The release to manufacturers of the Microsoft Office System is a milestone, not only in terms of the unprecedented development and testing work that went into it, but also because it enables customers to piece together data and operational aspects of their business where the real work happens: at individuals' desktops," said Steven Sinofsky, Senior Vice President of the Information Worker Group at Microsoft. "The value of software is measured in how you use it, and never before has it been so easy for businesses to derive such incredible value from their software investments."