Office 365 Launches on June 28th, And Why It Matters
Office 365 Launches on June 28th, And Why It Matters
Posted 06/05/2011 at 9:18am
| by Justin Ker
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Microsoft has confirmed it is holding an invitation only Office 365 launch party in New York on June 28th, and CEO Steve Ballmer will be in attendance to head up the marching band. It might sound like a lot of pomp and circumstance for the release of yet another new productivity suite, but trust us when we say this marks a pretty significant milestone for how Microsoft does business.
Microsoft offers a ton of cloud services, but most of these have a very experimental feel to them, and more often than not they are typically free. Microsoft has been very careful up to this point to not cannibalize their core products such as Windows and Office, even in the face of competition from Google Apps who have been aggressively targeting their customers. Office 365 is really just the evolution of their BPOS services suite, but this time it is being aggressively marketed as an alternative to a traditional Office implementation, rather than simply a complementary service.
In the consumer space rolling out updated software is simple. Enthusiasts will always want the latest and greatest, and the rest of us will simply buy whatever looks reasonable when upgrading to a new PC. In the world of big business however, upgrading software becomes a much more complicated proposition. Many IT departments to this very day are still rolling out Windows XP with Office 2003 pre-installed simply because that’s what everyone else at the company uses. The last thing IT departments want to worry about is support calls on what a .docx file is, or why someone can’t find an option on the ribbon that was in Office 2007, but not 2010. Not to mention the challenges involved in upgrading Office versions on thousands of remote machines should they choose to standardize on the latest and greatest every 3 years.
Office 365 promises to solve these problems for business of all sizes, and what we’ve seen so far looks promising. It will offer a per seat license that is custom tailored for the individual needs of each employee. A license for the receptionist for example might only unlock email and Office web apps, while the CEO’s copy might include all of this plus web conferencing, instant messaging, and even a full copy of Office 2010 Professional Plus. Microsoft takes care of the server hosting, and keeps all local and remote users fully updated with the latest and greatest features as time goes on.
Microsoft is beginning the slow transformation from a software company to a services company, and if successful here, expect to see this business model make its way into Windows.
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DJSPIN80
June 06, 2011 at 5:12am
I think it's a little too late for MS to be joining the party on SaaS productivity software.
For one, Open Office is free...
Second, Google Docs - while it hasn't cannibalized large market segments - is pretty darn easy to use and it's free.
To me, Office 365 is just a product offering that competes with big brother Office 2010. MS has the ENTIRE BPOS industry covered. They have no real 'competitors' (at least ones that have stolen significant market share) and they practically own the market.
I guess what they're looking for is a way to nickel-and-dime the little guy. This is just another way of saying "Hey, now we can force you to upgrade to the latest crap we push out!" and it'll cost anyone about $50/month/user.
I'll stick to my Mac with iWorks, it gets the job done.
igoka
June 05, 2011 at 1:30pm
I'm still using Office 2003 and love it . Didn't see reason go for 2007, 2010 and i'm gonna skip 365 as well.
Caboose
June 06, 2011 at 10:05am
You're going to need to move on sooner or later. Support for the older versions of Office will stop, and soon the new format will take hold as the default. You'll have difficulty opening documents created in the new version, or even not being able to open them at all. And some companies, if you're applying for an IT job, if you don't submit your resume in the exact format that they request, you get passed over.
Wingzero_x
June 05, 2011 at 12:09pm
Open/Libre/Star Office may be a really great solution, but honestly I don't know any businesses of any size that deploy them, or know of their existance for that matter.
Matter of fact as seen in when the German govt. tried to go all open source, it didn't work. The big reason, was people were just too enbedded within the Windows/Office way of doing things. The money saved by the software was negated by training for the users.
You can argue that Microsoft's new fangled interfaces are hard to use, and confusing, but Microsoft makes it easy to learn how, and where things are. Unlike FOSS which relies too much on user forums, and wiki's.
That being said, I do use Open Office, and I do recommend it to friends and family.
bstauts
June 05, 2011 at 11:37am
Even though I can't stand MS and they're probably not smart enough to figure this out. Microsoft might actually make more money to just include it in their OS for a nominal fee of an extra $50.00. They will eventually realize (once they lose market share on office suites) that their office products are being given away for free by other developers with better solutions. Since when have they really done anything that new or interesting with their product.
Redworm
June 05, 2011 at 11:21am
Services, You mean cloud services. Screw that. I want my data and my apps LOCAL. I AM NOT EVER GOING TO RENT WINDOWS OR OFFICE!.
I swear I'll go Mac first, But probably Linux.
Microsoft can go blank itself.
aarcane
June 05, 2011 at 11:14am
Yeah. OpenOffice (or Libre Office as it's called now) is an awsome product that has all the core functionality of Microsoft Office and has a stable document format for the last umpteen versions and the interface doesn't change radically every release. I own a copy of MS Office, and I still use Libre Office whenever I need to worry about compatibility. not everyone can afford to buy a copy of MS just to edit a document and send it back, and not everyone has the newest version all the time. With Libre office, that's never an issue. also, it works when my cloud is down, too.
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