According to Giera, as many as 60% of Microsoft's business customers could upgrade to the Professional Plus edition of Office within six years as requirements for document management and other collaborative tools permeate the workplace. "This is your classic information worker [scenario]," she says. "As these customers come to refresh their licenses, there are a lot of things that are in Office that make life easier." About one fifth of customers are likely to license Microsoft's Standard edition of Office, which carries an upgrade price of $239. Its core package of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint appeals to schools, charities, and other non-profit organizations, she says. The new Enterprise edition will likely be used primarily by "intellectual property heavy" companies in industries such as pharmaceuticals, oil and gas exploration, and defense contracting. "That's a small subset of customers," says Giera. Companies in those sectors will likely pay a premium for collaborative tools to manage worldwide research labs and large groups of product developers working remotely.
To take advantage of many of the server-side capabilities in Office, customers also need to buy from Microsoft client access licenses, or CALs for each desktop, which can range from $75 to $100 per year. When it ships Office 2007, Microsoft plans to introduce a new bundle of CALs that would discount access to a group of server products.
Subsea cable alternatives can provide a level of comfort for those concerned about disruptions. Realistically, they will continue to play a small, but critical role in the short term.
Maintaining existing network infrastructures often incurs huge technical debt before newer technologies are adopted over time.
Amid ongoing regional uncertainties, telecom infrastructure in the Middle East has expand to include terrestrial low-latency network infrastructure, which offers resilience and agility in navigating political complexities without relying solely on undersea networks.
