Office 2007 Delay Leaves Some Companies Out In The Cold

Microsoft's announcement last week that it will delay Office 2007 one or more months means that some enterprise customers will have to do without the new suite, a pair of analysts have said.

Gartner analysts Michael Silver and Alvin Park, writing in an online research note, argued that the push-back decreases the value of long-term licensing agreements, particularly Microsoft's Software Assurance and Enterprise Agreement programs.

Both plans give customers the right to upgrade to the next version of Microsoft software in exchange for a fee paid out over a two- or three-year period.

"At this point, customers that renewed their Enterprise Agreement (EA) or SA for Office in September, October and likely November of 2003 will not get a new version of Office for the approximately $240 to $300 they paid for each PC, although they may have made use of other SA benefits during the term," wrote Silver and Park.

Earlier this year, Microsoft said that it would roll out Office to volume license customers in October (and others in January 2007); last week, however, it cited a need to dive back into the code as the reason for the release being delayed until "before the end of the year" for corporations (and "early in 2007" for others).Silver and Park made several recommendations, including negotiating with Microsoft for a three-month extension before signing a new agreement. They also urged companies planning to renew their EA or SA to demand an extension to the back-end of their plans. "A delay in Office 2007 means that substantial work will not begin on the follow-on release until that much later, so ask for an extra three months in your next contract at no additional cost."

Thursday, a Microsoft spokesperson declined to say whether it will offer affected companies a free extension of their agreements.

A rival analyst last week said that the delay of Office 2007 may foreshadow yet another setback to Windows Vista, the next-generation operating system due in November. Although Joe Wilcox of JupiterResearch didn't tie together the releases, he but wondered whether the vagueness of the Office postponement meant Vista would soon follow suit.