Microsoft Office To Go Online For Free!

[Parsad]

In a response to Google's recent moves, Microsoft will be offering Office online for free in 2010.  Who could have imagined that such a moat could be diminshed so quickly.  We've witnessed many wide moats disappear over the last decade...how many more?  Cheers!

 

http://bigtech.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/2009/07/13/microsoft-office-to-go-online-for-free/

[keerthiprasad]

I once read an article discussing microsoft coming up with this idea in the early part of this decade.  The risk of losing this cash cow was the reason this project was suppressed.  Its funny how many chances the mighty get before they fall...

[Guest kawikaho]

Oh wow, that's pretty big.  And for all MSFT longs, there was a survey recently done polling IT depts at many different companies, and almost 70% of them had no plans of upgrading their current XP base to Windows 7.  I think this will be surprising news, since most analysts are hoping for the new OS cycle to generate more profits for MSFT. 

[jasonw1]

And for all MSFT longs, there was a survey recently done polling IT depts at many different companies, and almost 70% of them had no plans of upgrading their current XP base to Windows 7.  I think this will be surprising news, since most analysts are hoping for the new OS cycle to generate more profits for MSFT.

 

It really doesn't matter whether companies are using XP or Win7, when they buy a new PC, most of them are preinsalled with Windows, either XP or Win7 Microsoft is going to make money on it, the amount is roughly the same. Few people are upgrading OS without upgrading hardware now, so the key question is really new PC shipment.

 

As a regular user of Vista and Win7, unlike Vista, I think Win7 is going to be a surprise on the upside. XP is stale and has been moved off support, Vista is a failure, Win7 is decent and people would be more likely to upgrade after holding out for Vista.

 

[oldye]

http://www.xbox.com/en-US/live/projectnatal/

 

look its the wii, on crack!

[mpauls]

We shouldn't get too hasty.  Google hasn't quite taken Microsoft out of the desktop applications market just yet.  This move by Microsoft makes Google's efforts much more difficult in this regard.

 

On a separate, but similar topic, I see google slipping a bit in search.  For example, Say you own a product and want information on how to operate it or something related to functionality, Google does not offer you the option to filter out all of the retailers selling the product that you already own.  I suspect this has something to do with all the ad dollars they generate from retail clicks.

 

So it is a wise decision and the most rational strategy for Google to go after Microsoft's core, but if they fail this is a big loss.  Contrariwise it is Microsoft's best response to attack Google in Search, which too will be no easy task, but I think Microsoft will end up spending far less money attacking Google.  I also think Microsoft office's product line will be a hard market to penetrate, customers are very captive to products that require a large learning curve.  That said as long as Google can maintain their monopoly control of ad-share, they will have plenty of money to burn, but who knows whats around the corner for Google-and similarly for Microsoft.

 

 

 

 

 

[Guest Broxburnboy]

Sun Microsystem's OpenOffice for Windows has been available for free for years. It is every bit as functional as MS Office suite and comes with transparent filters for Office file types.

Get it free here:

 

http://www.openoffice.org/

 

Also Ubuntu, Linux freeware operating system, is also available for free (or an optional small donation). It now installs seamlessly over Windows OS on relatively new PCs.

 

http://www.ubuntu.com/

 

Between the 2 products, there is a problem for  Microsoft's virtual monopoly of the PC space.

[Guest kawikaho]

And for all MSFT longs, there was a survey recently done polling IT depts at many different companies, and almost 70% of them had no plans of upgrading their current XP base to Windows 7.  I think this will be surprising news, since most analysts are hoping for the new OS cycle to generate more profits for MSFT.

 

It really doesn't matter whether companies are using XP or Win7, when they buy a new PC, most of them are preinsalled with Windows, either XP or Win7 Microsoft is going to make money on it, the amount is roughly the same. Few people are upgrading OS without upgrading hardware now, so the key question is really new PC shipment.

 

As a regular user of Vista and Win7, unlike Vista, I think Win7 is going to be a surprise on the upside. XP is stale and has been moved off support, Vista is a failure, Win7 is decent and people would be more likely to upgrade after holding out for Vista.

 

 

I/T budgets go further than desktops.  I'm talking about the enterprise.

[ERICOPOLY]

You don't necessarily lose when competing with "free" software:

 

http://www.geekpedia.com/news193_Linux-server-market-share-plummeting.html

 

[Rabbitisrich]

A recent BusinessWeek article offers a counterpoint to that survey of IT personnel: http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/jul2009/tc20090713_452960.htm

 

Yet the news that diverted some of the attention that might otherwise have been focused on Microsoft came from a company called ScriptLogic. The small software vendor released results of a June survey that showed that 59.3% of companies have "no current plans" to use Windows 7 in their computers. At first glance, the findings might appear to undermine a widespread assumption among investors that Windows 7 would spark a much needed round of corporate buying.

 

But the results may be less indicative of companies' eventual buying plans than the headline numbers show. The Web-based survey was carried out four months before the planned release date of Oct. 22. So companies haven't yet heard the marketing pitches Microsoft has planned for the launch. Chief among these are big price promotions. During the first six months after launch, for example, the professional version of Windows 7 will sell at a discount of at least 15%, compared with the current business-class version of Vista, the most recent version of Windows.

 

 

ScriptLogic survey: http://www.scriptlogic.com/landing/google/da/windows-7-migration.asp?utm_source=pressrelease&utm_medium=pressrelease&utm_campaign=dawindows7

[Rabbitisrich]

We shouldn't get too hasty.  Google hasn't quite taken Microsoft out of the desktop applications market just yet.  This move by Microsoft makes Google's efforts much more difficult in this regard.

 

On a separate, but similar topic, I see google slipping a bit in search.  For example, Say you own a product and want information on how to operate it or something related to functionality, Google does not offer you the option to filter out all of the retailers selling the product that you already own.  I suspect this has something to do with all the ad dollars they generate from retail clicks.

 

So it is a wise decision and the most rational strategy for Google to go after Microsoft's core, but if they fail this is a big loss.  Contrariwise it is Microsoft's best response to attack Google in Search, which too will be no easy task, but I think Microsoft will end up spending far less money attacking Google.  I also think Microsoft office's product line will be a hard market to penetrate, customers are very captive to products that require a large learning curve.  That said as long as Google can maintain their monopoly control of ad-share, they will have plenty of money to burn, but who knows whats around the corner for Google-and similarly for Microsoft.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Google may spend more to attack Microsoft, but if they create an equivalent product and offer it free of charge, they will seriously impair Microsoft's model. I don't believe that the opposite holds true. Microsoft can't simply create a search engine that is just as good or slightly better than google. People won't stop using google unless it yields insufficient results. That's why the first mover advantage is so sticky, as seen in China, where Baidu, an inferior engine IMO, still commands 60% market share.

[snailslug]

I believe pretty much every Fortune 500 company has mission critical applications running on...Microsoft Excel and VBA.  There is no way this is going to be displaced in the enterprise, when you have so much legacy code, macros written in VBA (and not simple ones, I'm talking incredibly complex ones with tons of business logic), people have all the keyboard shortcuts memorized, etc.  There is a huge huge huge amount of stickiness here, and that's why people have not switched to the free StarOffice, etc.

 

Probably less of a pain to switch from Word, but the pain to switch from Excel and Access is horrendous.  I have written quite a few of these programs for several different jobs at different companies, so I know that switching to something "free" has a lot of cost.  So, the moat may continue for another 10-20 years simply due to the legacy/switching costs.

 

On the other hand, for those small businesses just starting out without legacy code, the free tools are quite attractive.

[nodnub]

I think Snailslug got it right with his comment. 

 

However, I agree Microsoft does face some strong competition headwind and I will not be surprised to see them lose market share. I think it will be death by a thousand small cuts over a period of years rather than a apocalyptic crash in their market share. 

[arbitragr]

I believe pretty much every Fortune 500 company has mission critical applications running on...Microsoft Excel and VBA.  There is no way this is going to be displaced in the enterprise, when you have so much legacy code, macros written in VBA (and not simple ones, I'm talking incredibly complex ones with tons of business logic), people have all the keyboard shortcuts memorized, etc.  There is a huge huge huge amount of stickiness here, and that's why people have not switched to the free StarOffice, etc.

 

Probably less of a pain to switch from Word, but the pain to switch from Excel and Access is horrendous.  I have written quite a few of these programs for several different jobs at different companies, so I know that switching to something "free" has a lot of cost.  So, the moat may continue for another 10-20 years simply due to the legacy/switching costs.

 

On the other hand, for those small businesses just starting out without legacy code, the free tools are quite attractive.

 

From personal experience, almost 90%+ of the analyst community in the financial sector uses Excel. Even though there's free stuff out there. The scalability of Excel makes it attractive to the sell side firms - you can perform simple financial models to very complex ones depending on your coding knowledge. Which makes it very attractive.

 

Anyone use Bing lately? That's almost exactly like Google once you get past the exterior. lol ... I think maybe this is what prompted Google to declare war on MSFT's crown jewels the OS, in the first place. Which then led to this now.

 

Will be interesting how things turn out.

[Mandeep]

I don't know.

 

MSFT may have a shitty product but I really like the way they do business.

I work for Fujitsu for sales. We are a microsoft partner in terms of consulting and a partner in terms of hardware (servers, storage, laptops).

 

The thing that I really respect about microsoft is how open they are. Do you know that microsoft direct salespeople can't sell licenses without a reseller?

For those of you that are not familiar with the IT space, usually in companies like Oracle, HP, EMC, etc, the direct salesforce actually competes with their channel partners. The direct team does not get paid if a reseller sells into their accounts. how stupid, right? Microsoft doesn't allow their direct people to sell without a reseller. Imagine what the resellers will do. It's no wonder why SHI, insight, cdw, and the other billion dollar resellers sell more microsoft than anything else and have yet to even touch their oracle lists (in reference to one reseller I just met today).

 

-M

[KFRCanuk]

Sun Microsystem's OpenOffice for Windows has been available for free for years. It is every bit as functional as MS Office suite and comes with transparent filters for Office file types.

Get it free here:

 

http://www.openoffice.org/

 

Also Ubuntu, Linux freeware operating system, is also available for free (or an optional small donation). It now installs seamlessly over Windows OS on relatively new PCs.

 

http://www.ubuntu.com/

 

Between the 2 products, there is a problem for  Microsoft's virtual monopoly of the PC space.

 

As a company with 500 employees, we have standardized on OpenOffice. We have 100 PC's and the rest run on SUN Ray terminals. SUN Ray terminals allows users to share a computer (server).  You have a keyboard, mouse, screen and instead of a computer you have a SUN Ray desktop unit. You can pretty much present any Operating System Desktop. In our case, we are presenting our users with an opensoalris.org desktop (also free). Right now, I'm getting 100 users onto a $12,000CDN server.

 

It's worked out really well. We have a total of 3 IT people.

 

The Old company I worked for had 500 employees, all running Windows laptops/Desktop. It took a staff of 6 IT people to run the company.

 

here are some sunray video's:

 

Oh yea, just to steer this reply further into the ditch. We tend to use opensource software first. That lets us understand the feature set we need. After that, we may switch the applications to non free software.