Large-scale systems such as SAP and PeopleSoft, and other comprehensive line of business (LOB) systems, are critical for the successful management of all types of business data and processes. However, not everyone in an organization has access to these systems, so the business data in them is often available to only a select few. Office Business Applications (OBAs) address this problem by using Office to bridge the divide between business data in LOB systems and the information worker.

At the Office Developer Conference today (February 11, 2008), Javed Sikander Sr. Director Platform Architecture, Microsoft announced the availability of the OBA Composition Reference Toolkit. The toolkit is available as a free download, it allows Information Workers to easily compose Office Business Applications from OBA Components such as SharePoint Web parts, content types, site pages, workflows, BDC application definitions, Visual Studio Tools for Office add-ins and Line of Business systems data sources. This toolkit is an illustration of composition capabilities of the 2007 Microsoft Office System and provides best practices and guidelines for building composite solutions.

LOB systems play a crucial role in supporting the functioning of businesses across a wide range of industries and markets. "The Results Gap" described in this paper plagues a significant majority of existing LOB system deployments. This trend will continue if solutions to bridge the gap are not implemented to unlock the value of LOB system investments across the broad spectrum of business application users.