Microsoft Releases Project 2002 BetaMicrosoft Releases Project 2002 Beta

Microsoft Wednesday released a final beta version of Project 2002--a forthcoming upgrade to its project-management suite--and said prices will rise $100 for the most popular edition.

Project 2002--designed to help managers, workgroups, and companies manage projects and the people who work on them--will likely ship during the second quarter of next year, Microsoft says. The biggest changes in the new version of the software are the addition of a professional edition for companywide project management and a server product for data sharing with other business apps. Project Standard will carry an estimated retail price of $600, while Project Professional will cost $1,000. Project Server will cost users $800, plus $179 for each client-access license.

The upcoming release will replace Project 2000, which shipped in April 2000. That software is priced at $500 per desktop. Microsoft also sells seats to an online collaboration environment called Project Central for $249 each. The company plans to discontinue selling Project Central once it ships Project 2002.

"As a desktop scheduling tool, Microsoft has become a de facto standard," says Gartner analyst Matt Light. Project 2002 will extend Project's desktop features, which let managers track tasks, budgets, and documents. New client-server capabilities include letting managers allocate people to projects based on their skills and availability, as well as analyze what-if scenarios across multiple projects. "They have done some significant rework on the enterprise project technology," Light says. About 35% of Project 2000 users may have tried Project Central, but he says many found its capabilities "limited."

Project Professional and Project Server could address that issue. The software features re-developed technology purchased last year from eLabor.com, a project-management software vendor. Microsoft says it sees two purchasing scenarios for Project users: workgroups that install the Standard edition on desktops and use the server for sharing documents and sending notifications to workers; and IT shops that buy Project Professional and deploy the server for companywide reporting and analysis of project resources.

Microsoft Project 2002 is capable of storing data in SQL Server 2000 and exposing that data for analysis using the vendor's online analytical processing services for SQL software, included in the database package. The company claims an installed base of nearly 8 million Project users.