Office, Microsoft Corp."s collection of programs for business documents and tasks, is fast becoming a software platform unto itself. A growing number of software developers are creating programs that run on top of Office, in the same way that Office and thousands of other applications run on Microsoft Windows. Plug-ins are available that make Word a lawyer-friendly word processing system or turn the Excel spreadsheet into a virtual financial advisor, along with hundreds of other programs that boost the capabilities of Office software.
It was the vast number of third-party Windows programs that led to that platform"s dominance of the personal computer market and made Microsoft the world"s largest software maker. "The most broadly successful software programs become a foundation," said Jeff Raikes, who heads the Microsoft division that includes Office. Office generates $10.6 billion in annual revenue, making it Microsoft"s second-largest business, behind Windows.