Office 365 shows Microsoft isn't yet serious about the cloud
blogs.computerworld.com
blogs.computerworld.com
Dropbox is probably my favorite cloud based service and guess what, I almost never use the web client. Sure the web client is awesome and super useful, but most of the time I'm using the native apps.
I agree that MSFT needs to massively improve Office web apps, but just because the primary focus is syncing with existing office apps is not a bad thing at all. For those of you not keeping score at home, Office is probably the most popular boxed software in the world outside of Windows.
Microsoft would be incredibly stupid to tell all their customers that they now have to use web versions. Their customers would tell them they want to keep using Outlook, Excel, Word, and Powerpoint like they have for the last 15 years.
If you were sitting on millions of existing office users, they'd be your #1 potential customer base too. That's just good business.
As nerds we all love the internet and the potential of the web, but as entrepreneurs, we should look at what Office 365 is doing and learn a few lessons from the pros. Already MSFT is signing up big enterprises on this thing. If they can execute at all, it's going to be a BIG hit.
Ballmer might not get consumer products at all, but when it comes to selling to and serving business customers, he gets it.
Yes, they would. But they'd also be stupid NOT to do what Google Docs is doing.
1) Offer a web-based set of apps that do most of what the desktop versions do and also facilitate sharing. 2) Make it easy to tie those in with desktop versions of Office (see Google Cloud Connect).
This lets them capture the desktop-only people, the web-only people, and those stuck in the middle.
If they don't do this, they're pushing everyone but the desktop-only people away.
The question is whether they will do it well enough to keep their customers, or whether their hesitance to lose the OS lock-in will make them do a hemigluteal job on their web app, in which case people will go with Google Docs or Zoho anyway.
So it's Microsoft's profit incentive to keep you locked in on their OS, while Google's profit incentive is to make u go cross-platform and use the cloud. The web is Google's home turf where they make most of their money, so it's in their best interest to do that.
Both Microsoft and Apple will never be really serious about the web, because at the end of the day that's not their main priority. Their main priority is to get you to use Windows/iOS and to buy their (Apple's) devices.
Exactly right: it's in Microsoft best interest to not to enter the "Post-PC Era".
However, I have often wondered when will Microsoft be irrelevant? Will there be a technology world without Microsoft (or a vastly different Microsoft)? Or will Microsoft's intrenched position in the corporate (and enterprise) environments ensure its continued (and varied) success?
People "accept" Microsoft products in a work environment largely because of inertia and a distaste of change. Very good arguments can be made whether or not there are just-as-good or better alternatives, but I believe that organizations can thrive without Microsoft technologies.
And maybe the inertia and distaste of change is a generational phenomena, because I cannot imagine a future world where my children are using Microsoft products. When I was growing up, I learned how to program using a Commodore 64 (and the "cool kids" had beepers) and then Microsoft was a blessing of sorts since it was accessible and affordable. But now we truly have technological advances in terms of hardware and software, so why will our future accept technology based in the past? (Really, how much of Windows 7 isn't based on the old Win32 APIs?)
As a casual observation, it seems to me that the battle for corporate e-mail will be the next major "battle ground"...
I can't use Office 365 because it apparently doesn't support Chrome (or it didn't in the beta review I read). That said, it is very attractive to me. The lack of a central directory service in Google Apps and poor scheduling system drives me crazy. Presumably, with their more expensive version, you'd also get access to security controls to force mobile users to have password locking and what not. That is also very attractive.
I was of course using Firefox and Linux, it may be the culprit, I don't know. Overall a pretty poor experiment.
When you say Office Live, was this back when it was actually called that (the new incarnation is "Windows Live Office", though I don't blame you for not keeping track of Microsoft's constant baffling name changes)?
I was also able to do the presentation, streaming it from Office Live, without much trouble.
Could be an isolated experience of course.
So, by the same token, Apple isn't serious about the cloud either?