OBAs (Office Business Applications) are a new breed of applications that utilize Microsoft Office as a familiar, yet powerful, user interface to Enterprise systems. Leveraging the expressing power and large distribution of the Office suite, their biggest strength comes from the fact that they minimize the "mindprint" imposed on end users. This is achieved by allowing them to use the same tool to create data bound reports that they are already using daily to produce all kinds of other "reports"

OBAs are useful because:

• They extend LOB (line-of-business) functionality into Office clients for easy consumption and broader reach.


• They aggregate tasks spread across multiple LOB screens without major server side work.


• They capture business activity surrounding a business process.


• They improve agility and reuse.


• They unlock more value from existing systems and information stores.