As part of its growing endeavor to establish Office as a full-fledged platform rather than application suite, Microsoft will host the first Office System Developer Conference in early February 2005. Over 800 attendees will learn how to build solutions atop the company's Office infrastructure.

Microsoft Chairman and Chief Software Architect Bill Gates will give a keynote address, indicating the importance of the conference to Redmond.

With Office System upgrades slowing and competition heating up from rivals such as the free OpenOffice.org, Microsoft has focused on selling its productivity suite as a complete ecosystem for enterprise applications. The move will help push businesses to the latest Office 2003, which includes support for XML and Office-specific development tools.

"This is our first developer conference for the entire Microsoft Office System, signifying the transformation of Microsoft Office from a suite of products to a platform on which developers can build valuable solutions for Microsoft Office System customers," said Adam LeVasseur, group product manager for Microsoft's Information Worker Product Management Group.

But the transition does not stop with a Windows-like platform for development; Microsoft also sees Office as an eventual replacement for browsers in the workplace.

"Microsoft is heavily promoting Office as what it calls a 'smart client' to front-end backend applications. I would expect Microsoft to use the developer conference to advance this strategy of replacing browsers or proprietary front-ends with Office," Jupiter Research senior analyst Joe Wilcox told BetaNews.

Longhorn will also play a key role in the evolution of Office, says Wilcox. "Microsoft typically uses its larger professional developer conference to showcase the next version of Windows. We saw this in October 2003 with Longhorn and will see it again with next year's PDC. So, I wouldn't be surprised if Microsoft uses the Office developer conference as a launching pad for the Longhorn version of the productivity suite."