Microsoft's XP launches sans Blair

Blair was accused of endorsing the new Office XP product from Microsoft by being filmed watching a demonstration of the new software. But his ties to the company have their roots in the government gateway project, which sees the UK government spending a minimum of 15m on Microsoft products and services to put government services online for the public.

Office XP is essentially an update to Microsoft Office, with more functionality added to traditional programs like Word and Excel. Analysts believe that the package could be a hard sell for Microsoft, considering that IT budgets are being slashed in the current climate and with businesses generally not convinced that the new functionality is going to be core to their operations.

But one of the greater attractions to Office XP is its close integration with a brand-new product from Microsoft - SharePoint Portal Server. SharePoint is a content management system, which allows for enterprise-wide searching across data stored in Office XP programs.

Gary Tugwell-Smith, SharePoint product manager for the UK said: “The database for SharePoint is called the Web Storage System, which is the same database we have in Exchange 2000. You can put almost anything in it and organise it yourself based on XML.”

SharePoint is intended to be a corporate intranet product, with extensions to internet information supplied by its integration with Microsoft's portal partner, Plumtree Software. Tugwell-Smith said that UK customers of the product include British Midland, Walkers and the Telfrod and Wrekin City Council.