I can not emphasise enough the importance of Microsoft's announcement about Open Office. There is no question that this change in direction creates an entirely new view of software delivery on a mass scale that far supersedes packaged software instillations.
Software as a Service (SaaS) is the wave of the future. Customers will demand this form of software delivery.
Our new paper on the subject titled "The Open System for Master Production Scheduling: Information Technology for Semantic Connections between Data and Mathematical Models" will appear in the International Journal of Operations Research and Information Systems very soon.
The article deals with a system to make spreadsheets like Excel an interface for SaaS.
In addition, we have another article appearing in the Sept. issue of Cutter IT Journal titled "Intranet Architecture for the Semantic Enterprise."
The MIT Laboratory for Manufacturing and Productivity is on the forefront of SaaS, having begun a research program in 2003 that addresses this important area. We have given several presentations to Microsoft.