Microsoft Australia's director of the Office business unit, Tony Wilkinson, said in the past the focus has been on personal productivity, but 2007 brings more integration between the client and server, including search.

"We have had around 86,000 downloads of Office and Vista in Australia [and] worked with about 27 customers where we have done pilot programs," Wilkinson said.

At SEWL, consulting firm BearingPoint projected time savings in the order of A$6,624 (US$5,097) to A$19,344 with the new software.

"There are three areas to do with managing information in a business and help get most out of people -- collaboration, managing the life cycle of an application, and helping people find and retrieve information," Wilkinson said.

Windows Vista will be available to enterprise customers at the end of the month.