Microsoft Rethinks Its Office 2007 Server Line Up

After more than two years of rumor and speculation surrounding its plans to create a new suite of Office servers designed to complement its desktop Office offerings, Microsoft on Thursday revealed its final Office 2007 server packaging line up.

While the company is introducing several brand-new servers as part of its next-generation office-productivity family, there is no comprehensive family of server offerings akin to the one that company insiders, testers and customers had been expecting. Instead, Microsoft has opted to roll up into a single new server, christened “Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007,” several server offerings that many company watchers expected to launch as standalone products.

…[T]he big kahuna on the Office Server 2007 side is Office SharePoint Portal Server 2007. That offering will combine Microsoft’s current Content Management Server, SharePoint Portal Server and what was expected to debut as a standalone Excel Server into a single product. Until quite recently, Microsoft was using the name “Office Server” to refer to Office SharePoint Portal Server 2007, company officials acknowledged.

SharePoint Portal Server 2007 will act as a backend for a variety of new client-based Office services. It also will incorporate a variety of workflow engines, designed to mesh with Windows Workflow Foundation, the next-generation Windows workflow technology that Microsoft is baking into Windows Vista, Longhorn Server and other future Windows releases.

Microsoft Rethinks Its Office 2007 Server Line Up (Microsoft Watch)

(Also posted at Knowledge Work)