Microsoft Plans New Server Products For Office v12

cbnet2004 writes "Microsoft Watch is reporting that when the upcoming Office 12 is released (what product reaches 12.0?), Microsoft will have a server version of Excel, Visio, and several other products along with it. So if you thought Microsoft was trying to dominate your desktop, now you'll have to watch out for your severs, too. According to the article, the new servers will fortunately not be for new "thin client" solutions."

Comments

Re:So, it's a licencing engine?

[hoggoth]

> what technical/practical benifits do the 'server versions' of these apps provide?

It's about time! How many servers out there are running a desktop Excel that is being COM controlled by a web application? Excel is NOT made to handle multiple simultaneous requests, and hangs, crashes, corrupts and does other nasty things when it is asked to.
I don't know how many times I've had to kludge together a solution to manipulating Excel spreadsheets or Powerpoint presentations in a web server application. None of the solutions are perfect. Controlling Excel and Powerpoint with COM leads to an unstable solution. Emulating Excel or Powerpoint data leads to buggy data (since Microsoft actively tries to F* up anybody trying to emulate their data formats).

A server-capable Office engine would enable me to manipulate Excel, Powerpoint, and Word documents in a web application.