One of the main factor/reason that Microsoft introduced Microsoft Office Package into Market is as follows.

Package  : Common requirement to all

Application  : Specific requirement

Initially in 1990's all applications are DOS based i.e. Character User Interface(CUI) means that at a time only one application can be executed.

Examples for Character User Interface Applications are:

Word Processor(Word Star), Spreadsheet(Lotus-123), DBMS(dbaseIII+), etc

Main Drawback of these CUI application is switching i.e. If we are working with word star file for text processing or etc and which also requires comparison table figures from lotus-123 file then we have to quit the word star application and switch to lotus-123 file vice versa.

May be innovative thought or specific requirement or etc

Microsoft Merged all applications(mentioned above) into one package called as "Microsoft Office" includes additional concept of Outlook Mail Service as a whole its a Graphical User Interface (GUI). But, anyway Microsoft Corporation Released Microsoft Office-97 on November 19, 1996.

Microsoft Office - 97 contains :

Microsoft Word - 97, Microsoft Excel - 97, Microsoft PowerPoint - 97, Microsoft Access - 97, Microsoft outlook - 97, etc

Since 1996 Microsoft Released different versions of Microsoft Office:

Microsoft Office - 97

Microsoft Office - 2000

Microsoft Office - XP/2002

Microsoft Office - 2003

Microsoft Office - 2007

Microsoft Office - 2010

Now MS Excel itself one Database. All organisations like small or big are depended on Microsoft Office Package for Publishing Reports,etc.

Further information please visit http://sites.google.com/site/ankarajmarri04/classificationofcomputers