Microsoft Office System 2003 will crush forthcoming Linux desktop offerings from Sun Microsystems and Red Hat by serving as an XML-enabled front end to back-end systems and integrating collaboration features, one key executive predicts. Jeff Raikes, group vice president of Microsoft's Productivity and Business Services, said the integration of collaboration, communications and XML support into the Office 2003 suite will offer a far greater business value than what the open-source competition can deliver.

Sources at Microsoft said the company plans to launch Office System 2003 in late September. "The competitors aren't good enough for information work," Raikes told attendees at Microsoft's Redmond, Wash., annual conference for financial analysts. "Their offerings aren't cheaper than Office 2003 when they think about the total value equation." That's because Microsoft has bundled several other products and capabilities with the upcoming product, including its next-generation SharePoint Portal 2.0, its Office Live Meeting Web conferencing offering and realtime communications features of Microsoft Office Live Communications Server, Raikes said. Also, integration of support for XML and extensible XML schemas will allow Office 2003 users to connect to back-end systems, databases and distributed applications.