Apps for Office makes Office 2013 unique, claims Microsoft

VBA upgrade steals the show in new Office enterprise reveal

After Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer's introduction to Microsoft Office 13, the mid-afternoon session at Microsoft's San Francisco reveal dug a little deeper into the suite's enterprise offerings, turning up an app-based plugin service that feels like Office 2013's real push forward.

Introduced by Corporate VP JP Hough as an upgrade to previous versions' VBA [Visual Basic for Applications] environment, Apps for Office seems a far more powerful model for customising the functionality of the key components of Office.

Office 2013 on an enterprise level is being sold far more directly as an extenson of Microsoft's existing Office 365 model - so much so that this is Microsoft's chosen brand name for Office in the enterprise field.

Access, Excel, Word and Powerpoint, as well as Sharepoint, were all demoed integrating with Apps for Office plugins, with uses ranging from having Excel intelligently pull financial figures out of a spreadsheet and place them on a live Bing map, to a widget plugged into Word which could carry out web searches on words and phrases, automatically inserting cited information into the document.

With a new API, slimmed down to take advantage of mobile devices, Hough said Apps for Office represents "a significant win for developers and our customers" in terms of the range of possibility available in its HTML 5 and java-based development environments.

Hough also described Apps for Office as being able to "span web applications and client applications."

"The existence of a global marketplace where developers who target that markert have the broadest possible reach, is going to be incredibly popular," said Hough.

He was bullish about its likely sales performance.

"I think it's going to generate a lot of new business," he added.

Apps for Office will support a number of pricing models, which Hough listed as free, trial and paid versions of apps. Furthermore, he said, developers can place Apps in targeted areas of the shop, aiming a financial services app only at those who'll need one, with a relevantly competitive price point next to other similar apps, instead of placing it in the general store.

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Apps for Office makes Office 2013 unique, claims Microsoft

VBA upgrade steals the show in new Office enterprise reveal

Hough was keen to promote Apps for Office as the key standout feature of this new Office 365 when compared to rival cloud-based products such as those from Google and Libre.

"I don' t know that there's very many competitors today with what we've just unveiled with Office," Hough told Computing.

"When you look at the rich clients connected to our service, the deep functionality we're offering in the service, our web experiences, our existing mobile capabilities across the full sweep of apps and services, I think we're investing enormously in advancing productivity, collaboration and communication," said Hough.

Skydrive Pro

Other additions to the revamped Office 365 include Skydrive Pro, an enhanced version of the existing Skydrive which offers greater powers to provisioning by IT departments. Skydrive Pro has a client, explained Hough, which can be installed on multiple machines to Sync data with a tighter degree of governance.

An enhanced preview mode for documents, which Microsoft is calling Rich Preview, also gives such detail as animated Powerpoint slides, full file information and even detailed information on people in an Office 365 network all before content has been downloaded from the cloud.

Hough also showcased a greater degree of hands-on governance in the new Office 365, showing how Outlook now supplies "Policy Tips" when sensitive information such as credit card or bank account numbers is typed into email subjects. However, Hough also explained how it will be possible for IT departments to completely disallow such content to be sent at all, thus helping users avoid accidentally giving away critical information.

"Much of the information leakage from companies is inadvertent," said Hough.

The rumour that it will be possible to edit PDF files in Office was also confirmed to an extent, as Hough showcased Office's new ability to interpret PDF data. Known as PDF Reflow, it can place words and even tables from PDF documents into Office, rebuilding them intelligently into tables for Word or data for Excel.

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Apps for Office makes Office 2013 unique, claims Microsoft

VBA upgrade steals the show in new Office enterprise reveal

Cloud City

Like Ballmer's earlier presentation, Hough's speech hammered home the general point that Microsoft's revamped Office for enterprise is placing the cloud very much at the centre of proceedings.

"The cloud is not the browser; it is a lot more to us," promised Hough, explaining how interfacing between devices was paramount, and showcasing Microsoft's new install-management page which can activate or deactive licenses, potentially allowing users to pick and mix generational parts of Office. It's also now possible to stream Office components directly from the cloud.

"We're not just taking a bet for ourselves with the cloud, we're taking a bet for our customers," said Hough.

But even as a betting man, two factors Hough would not be drawn on were pricepoints, which he said "hadn't been decided upon as yet", and wider devices involved in the cloud connectivity plan. When Computing asked Hough about iOS in particular, he replied that Microsoft is "not announcing any changes to our mobile plans today".

When asked to elaborate on any other devices, Hough said that his team was taking an agnostic approach.

"When we think about putting any footprint on any mobile device, we're going to think about it in the context of that device being connected to the service. We're not going to think of isolated experiences on the device."
Hough said that any given device will become a useful way to connect to the service.

"That's the way we're thinking about RT, that's the way we're thinking about our web applications, and with Windows Phone," explained Hough. "That will continue to be pervasive. When I said we're shifting to the cloud at the centre, it is the cloud that becomes the repository of knowledge of everthing you've done with Office, and as you switch devices, the thing you do to get the most out of it is connect to the cloud, and that will be the same with any other endpoints."

As vague as this answer may be, there's no denying that, should uptake of the cloud philosophy, and with it the mini-industry that Microsoft wants to build around Apps for Office, prove successful, Hough will be right to claim there will be little like new Office available as a current multiplatform solution.