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• April 3, 2003 •

Microsoft Sets Office 2003 Bundling & Licensing Plans

Microsoft Office 2003 This week, Microsoft revealed its Office 2003 Bundling & Licensing Plans.

Six Office System bundles will be available, including a new addition for small businesses and another to be installed on new PCs. The bundles are:

  • Office 2003 Basic Edition - Only bundled with new PCs and include Microsoft Word, Excel, and Outlook
  • Office 2003 Standard Edition - Available at retail. Includes Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook
  • Office 2003 Professional Edition - Available at retail. Includes all of the Standard Edition plus Microsoft Access, Publisher, and Business Contact Manager1 for Outlook
  • Office 2003 Professional Enterprise Edition - Only available through volume licensing (the primary way that large enterprises purchase software) and will include all the applications from the Professional Edition, plus Microsoft InfoPath2
  • Office 2003 Small Business Edition - Available at retail. Includes all of the Standard Edition plus Microsoft Publisher and Business Contact Manager1 for Outlook
  • Office 2003 Students and Teachers Edition - Available through academic volume-licensing and retail. Same as Standard Edition, lower price

1 Business Contact Manager is an extension of Outlook that adds customer relationship management (CRM) information to contacts, calendars and e-mail.
2 Microsoft Office InfoPath streamlines the process of gathering information by allowing users to create and complete dynamic forms and submit them to the XML-enabled systems and business processes that need the information.

Now Office 2003 Professional Edition and Office 2003 Professional Enterprise Edition will include new professional versions of Word, Excel, Outlook, and PowerPoint that include Information Rights Management (IRM) document-protection technology, and some other corporation-oriented capabilities. So only the professional versions can create IRM-protected documents, although any Office 2003 application can work with these protected documents.

As with previous Office versions, the Office editions can be installed on up to two PCs, one on a desktop, and one on a notebook, though not to be used concurrent. The only exception is for the Office 2003 Students and Teachers Edition, which previously only allowed a single installation, will now be allowed concurrently on as many as three computers. This edition will also come with less restrictive licensing rules, that will let parents of students or children under age 18 legally buy the product. According to sources, this change makes the Office 2003 Students and Teachers Edition available to more than half of US households, and Microsoft expects this version to be its retail sales leader going forward.

Pricing for Office 2003 has still to be announced.

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Last Updated: April 3, 2003