While there has been no definitive news on new versions of Office, many developers have been developing application for Office 2003; an indication, Microsoft says, of its use as a platform. Adam LeVasseur, group product manager for Microsoft Office, noted, "With the launch of Office 2003 and the Office System, we really opened the door on positioning Office as Microsoft's second platform for building applications, behind windows."

Microsoft's corporate vice president for Office, Richard McAniff, added, "I've seen a lot of changes in my days here at Microsoft. Office has grown up from an application to a suite of applications to a system of servers and services and applications."

The company said it will continue using XML because of its data handling ability. Microsoft defended concern that has been expressed in XML's performance, by noting the number of developers who have used it. LeVasseur said, "Already, there are a million professional developers targeting Office 2003, and a full third of those are taking advantage of the XML capabilities, and it's a new technology and we're really excited and inspired by that progress."

Microsoft said it has taken steps to ensure XML does not hamper performance. Jeff Teper, general manager of the Business Portals Group at Microsoft, said the Office platform itself has been retooled to make sending XML over the wire very efficient.

LeVasseur. did now waver in his ardent support of XML. He said, "Another great thing about XML is, once you have an XML structure inside the document, you can then program against the document based on the XML schema. XML unlocks the power of what you can do in an application," taking isolated data and allowing it to be reused, he said. Web services, meanwhile, are used to provisioning XML data for consumption by other applications or servers.

Microsoft shifted discussing XML's use in Office, by offering up its SharePoint collaboration technology as yet another example of XML's strength. Microsoft brought in Andrew Rang, the Web developer of Sutter Hospital. He said that XML can also be used as a provisioning tool, and cities affiliate who are able to build their own forms. "It gives us control over what they can build," Rang said.