Office web applications to give enterprises better end-to-end options

Office 2010 : freedom for PC users?

One of the more significant announcements coming out of Microsoft's recent Worldwide Partner Conference (WPC) in New Orleans was the unveiling of the new features and delivery timeline behind the next version of its productivity suite, Office 2010.

The headline feature of the new package is the ability it offers to access some applications over the internet.

Excel, OneNote, PowerPoint and Word will be available as browser-based applications to 400 million Windows Live account users, said Microsoft's client product manager, Chris Adams.

The move has been expected for some time, said Forrester information and knowledge management analyst Sheri McLeish.

"Microsoft had to react to the number of web-based office productivity tools available now," she said.

Google poses the most obvious threat, despite Google Apps failure so far to put a significant dent in Office revenues.

The search giant has made several bold strides onto Microsoft's turf, through its online collaborative application Wave, its targeting of Exchange users with Google App Sync, and its most recent move to develop its Chrome browser into a full-blown operating system.

Meanwhile, Microsoft has hit back with a new search engine called Bing, its Office 2010 web applications and its Azure cloud computing platform.

So which set of offerings will appeal most to enterprise buyers?

"I think the vast preponderance will be going with Microsoft. Not because it’s the least cost or the most forward looking, but because it’s the most holistic," said Gartner's chief of research for software, Tom Austin.

Google Apps does not yet match the end-to-end enterprise range Microsoft has, explained Austin. "Think of your business applications and how they might be integrated already with Microsoft Office," he said.

Nevertheless, Google may still appeal to some, he added. "With Google Docs, you have the real-time, free-for-all joint editing capabilities that you can't do with Microsoft. Microsoft leads in many areas and Google leads in some areas. "

Microsoft's Adams believes that with firms increasingly looking to offer staff flexible working, the appeal of web-based applications will grow.

"The ability to offer Office anywhere is a major thrust of Office 2010, to deliver the best productivity experience across the PC, mobile phone and browser," said Adams.

New features in the local desktop version of Office 2010 introduced by Microsoft include better control of email through Outlook, better end-to-end document fidelity, and better multi-authoring with Word.

But while such features could increase productivity for mobile users, the flip-side of introducing a host of new features, and a new web-delivered interface, could be a degree user disorientation.

For example, in Office 2010 Microsoft has dispensed with the final drop down menu left over from Office 2007 and replaced it with a feature called Office Backstage.

However, not having that final drop down menu could disrupt users. "Remember what happened when Microsoft released Office 2007, the new interface considerably disrupted users, and that is one thing you don’t want to do,” said Forrester's McLeish.

Perhaps the biggest problem for enterprises looking to deploy Office 2010 could be the upgrade paths that may need to be traversed. McLeish said that Forrester's research showed a third of firms postponing upgrades after Office 2007 was released.

McLeish added that firms still using Office 2000 may also need to think hard about their next moves, since the extended support period lapsed on 14 July. " Do they go to Office XP (2003), or take a bigger leap to Office 2010," said McLeish.

"If the plan is to upgrade Office in mid-2010, my belief is that IT needs to raise awareness within the workplace about files received as well as sent, encourage use of PDF when needing to share documents externally, and vigorously enforce antivirus updates to bridge the gap until these new tools are rolled out."