Office has long moved past the status of an application. The software's evolution and the wide adoption rate qualify it as a platform for both developers and Office users. The add-ins, the volume of customizations and Office's deployment as a front-end to mission critical business systems have evolved the software to the level of platform.

"Support for XML introduced in Office 2003, enriched developer tools via Visual Studio Tools for Office, and opportunities for developers to share ideas and hear from technical experts at events such as the Office Developer and SharePoint conferences have been instrumental in realizing this vision," revealed Sanjay Parthasarathy, corporate vice president with Microsoft's Developer and Platform Evangelism Group.

According to the Redmond Company, the modifications introduced in the 2007 Microsoft Office System will continue to breathe live into the idea of Office as a platform. The RibbonX and the GUI changes, the added extensibility features and its capabilities in the server level, along with maturity, tool support and connection among back-end, line-of-business systems via Microsoft Office, all recommend Office as a platform.

"For example, the alignment between the 2007 Office release and the core platform is greater than ever, and there are numerous instances of this: ASP.NET is the programming model for SharePoint, the BI capabilities in Office can take advantage of new analysis capabilities we delivered in SQL Server Reporting Services, the workflow capabilities are powered by Windows Workflow in the .NET Framework 3.0, and the list goes on and on," added Parthasarathy.

In fact, Office 2007 was designed as the core asset in building Office Business Applications for both client and server.