Raikes, a 25-year company veteran, spearheads the Office and business applicaitions effort at Microsoft.

An edited transcript of the interview follows.

CRN: This is a big launch. Can you hit a few hot spots about what's most important for partners?

Raikes: Clearly one of the most important [aspects] of 2007 Office System is the bet we're making on server and services support for information work--particularly Office SharePoint Server. I like to think [that] the Office SharePoint Server product introduction is equally important to the introduction of the Office suite of client applications in the early 1990s.