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Microsoft Office for 91 percent off! | Computerworld Blogs

Wed, 28 May 2008 17:50:11 -0000

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

The New York Times' Bits tech blog is reporting that anyone with a .edu e-mail address, whether they are a current student or not, can buy Microsoft Office Ultimate for $60, or 91% off until May 16.

1) The Web site to purchase Office Ultimate at a discount is called "The Ultimate Steal."

2) Microsoft's senior VP in charge of Office Chris Capossela confirmed to the Times that anyone with a .edu e-mail address is eligible for the discount. Most colleges and universities grant their alumni graduates .edu e-mail addresses.

I ordered just before it was supposed to end the first time at the end of April. I had not problem except that it took forever for the DVD to arrive. I was never asked to show any other proof of enrollment except giving them my .edu address. I also downloaded the exe and had no problems with it (got the DVD just in case though).

Tags: microsoft office pricing

Posted by: marbux

The Office question 2007 | Rough Type: Nicholas Carr's Blog:

Tue, 18 Dec 2007 21:31:55 -0000

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

As I argued in my post Office Generations last year, we're in the early stages of the "hybrid phase" of personal productivity applications, when most people will use web apps to extend rather than replace their old Office apps. This phase will play out over a number of years as the web technologies mature, at which point it will become natural to use purely web-based apps (with, probably, continued local caching of data and program code).

What this means is that Microsoft has a good opportunity to maintain Office's dominance during the switchover by pursuing what it calls its "software plus services" strategy. But Microsoft should be anything but complacent right now. Maintaining market dominance does not necessarily mean maintaining traditional levels of profitability. The biggest threat posed by online alternatives may well be to undermine Microsoft's pricing power - a trend we're already seeing in the student market.

It's all about interoperability and functionality without disruption to existing business processes. posted by garyedwards

Tags: collaboration interoperability office office20 w3c web

Posted by: garyedwards

Office generations 1.0 - 4.0| Rough Type: Nicholas Carr's Blog:

Tue, 18 Dec 2007 21:05:09 -0000

Comments:

In this 2006 article Nick Carr lays out the history of office productivity applications, arguing the Office 2.0 is really Office 3.0 - the generation where desktop productivity office suites mesh with the Web.

This article is linked to The Office question, December 18, 2007
posted by garyedwards

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

The key is to extend both functionality and interoperability without taking away any of the capabilities that users currently rely on or expect. Reducing interoperability or functionality is a non-starter, for the end user as well as the IT departments that want to avoid annoying the end user. You screw with PowerPoint at your own risk.

Exactly! This is also the reason why ODF failed in Massachusetts! Reducing the interoperability or functionality of of any workgroup related business process is unacceptable. Which is why IBM's rip out and replace MSOffice approach as the means of transitioning to ODF is doomed.

The Office 2.0 (er 3.0) crowd is at a similar disadvantage. They offer web based productivity services that leverage the incredible value of web collaboration. The problem is that these collaboration services are not interoperable with MSOffice. This disconnection greatly reduces and totally neutralizes the collaboration value promise.

Microsoft of course will be able to deliver that same web based collaborative comp[uting value in an integrated package. They and they alone are able to integrate web collaboration services into existing MSOffice workgroups.

In many ways this should be an anti trust issue. If governments allow Microsoft to control the interop channels into MSOffice, then Microsoft web collaboration systems will be the only choice for 550 million MSOffice workgroup users. The interop layer is today an impossible barrier for Office 2.0, Web 2.0, SaaS and SOA competitors.

This is the reasoning behind our da Vinci CDF+ plug-in for MSOffice. Rather than continue banging the wall of IBM's transition to ODF through government legislated rip out and replace mandates, we think the way forward is to exploit the MSOffice plug-in architecture, using it to neutralize and re purpose existing MSOffice workgroups.

The key is getting MSOffice documents into a web ready format that is useful to non Microsoft web platform (cloud) alternatives. This requires a non disruptive transition. The workgroups will not tolerate any loss of interop or functionality. We believe this can be done using CDF+ (XHTML 2.0 + CSS).

Think of it as cutting off the transition of existing workgroup business processes to MS-OOXML at the head point; MSOffice. In the MS Stack, these business processes are heading for the Exchange/SharePoint Hub, where they then connect deep into the Microsoft cloud. We propose to use the da Vinci plug-in to re purpose MSOffice to connect to a FOSS cloud. Perhaps a Zimbra - Alfresco hub instead of Exchange/SharePoint.

The parrallel side of this equation is that we can also rather easily convert ODF docuemnts to that same CDF+ profile, joining the world of Linux Desktops into this higher, web platform level.
posted by garyedwards

Microsoft sees this coming, and one of its biggest challenges in the years ahead will be figuring out how to replace the revenues and profits that get sucked out of the Office market.

Bingo! posted by garyedwards

The real problem that I see is the reduced functionality and integration. I don’t think there can be a Revolution until someone builds an entire suite of Revolutionary office products on the web. Office has had almost (or more than, don't quote me) 15 years of experience to build a tight cohesive relationship between it's products.

Rather than replace MSOffice, why not move the desktop bound business processes to the web? Re write them to take advantage of web collaboration, universal connectivity, and universal interop.

Once the business processes are up in the cloud, you can actually start introducing desktop alternatives to MSOffice. The trick is to write these alternative business processes to something other than .NET 3.0, MS-OOXML, and the Exchange/SharePoint Hub.
posted by garyedwards

left standing in a few years will be limited to those who succeeded in getting their products adopted and imbedded into the customers 'workflow' (for lack of a better term) and who make money from it.

A silo'ed PPA is not embedded in a company's workflow (this describes 95% of the Office 2.0 companies) thus their failure is predetermined.

A Free PPA is not making money thus their failure is predetermined as well.

For those companies who adapt to a traditional service and support model and make it through the flurry.....would they really qualify as Office 4.0?

Spot on! Excellent comments that go right to the heart of the matter. The Office 2.0 crowd is creating a new market category that Microsoft will easily be able to seize and exploit when the time is right. Like when it becomes profitable :) posted by garyedwards

Tags: carr office office20 web

Posted by: garyedwards

Microsoft Watch - Business Applications - Convergence=Integration

Tue, 13 Mar 2007 17:08:52 -0000

Comments:

Thanks for the insightful commentary Joe. I see things a bit differently. Maybe my tin foil hat is wearing a bit tight these days, but i see MSOffice XML (MOOXML and the MOOXML binary InfoSet) as a very important aspect of how Microsoft integrates and leverages their desktop office monopoly power into server side and device systems.

It is the combination of MOOXML and .NET that creates the integration mesh between desktop, server systems, and devices. Imagine every application or service participating in either a loosely coupled or carefully crafted information processing chain, being fluent in MOOXML, and able to process internal data structures and processing instructions unique to .NET.

Enterprise systems and services from ORACLE, IBM and SAP will not have this same integration fluency.

The design of ISO MOOXML is such that it would be impossible for <b>non Microsoft server and device systems</b> to match the quality and depth of integration with the 500 million desktops running MSOffice bound business processes.

Given that MOOXML will probably succeed at getting ISO/IEC approval, removing the last "legal" barrier for this MOOXML Stack, were looking at a massive migration of MSOffice bound workgroup - workflow business processes to a new lockin point; The Exchange/SharePoint Hub.

With the real estate industry, this migration to to E/S hosted applications only took six months to completely replace years of desktop productivity shrinkware dominance. The leap in productivity was spectacular.

The downside of this migration is that the real estate industry is now tied into Microsoft at the critically important business process level. A binding that will perhaps last through the next fifteen years. Try to take this away from the average Realtor though, and they will bite your hand off.

The productivity payoff of this migration is so dramatic that on one Friday afternoon, going into a weekend of showing homes and submitting offers - the stuff that will make or break every Realtor - Microsoft issued a summary end of life for all Win2K desktops. And pulled it off without a hitch.

What MS did was to issue a security patch for all Exchange systems. The patched systems then required IE 7.0. There is no IE 7.0 for Win2K desktops - notebooks. End of Life. And not one complaint. The entire real estate industry simply ran out to purchase new XP MSOffice 2003 systems able to run IE 7.0. The lesson i took away from this is that the productive value of these E/S Hub applications is such that writing a check to continue business was seen as a requirement equivalent to having a license to practice or a car to drive around in. It's a basic business expense. They were happy to write these checks.

I believe that the MOOXML Stack is designed to lock out competitors at a level they've never thought possible. And i think it will work given that there is no such thing as an alternative ODF Stack.

In 2004, washed away by the DOJ anti trust settlement, Scott McNeely announced the terms of Sun's surrender to Microsoft. He pointed out that Sun had find a way to work with Microsoft because the Sun's customers were demanding better integration of server side systems with the Microsoft desktop.

Sun sales people had tried to convince server side customers that they could achieve the needed level of desktop integration by replacing MSOffice with the inexpensive StarOffice or the freely available OpenOffice. When that didn't work, the sales staff stopped trying to bundle StarOffice with their server side systems because it was killing sales.

Now Microsoft has their own server side systems coming down the pike in droves. These systems all offer superior integration with MSOffice productivity environments. They also provide an easy to walk path towards the incredible productivity jump a business process takes by moving from desktop bound workgroups to an XML based integration Hub.

Server side vendors like IBM, Oracle, Zimbra, Alfresco, RedHat - JBoss, SalesForce.com and Google are never going to get that same kind of integration to the MSOffice bound desktop.

When the server side guys competed against each other, currying favor with Redmond was the secret to marketplace advantage. Now that Microsoft has competitive offerings, those favors might not be available. If the purchase decision is going to be based on integration with the MSOffice bound desktop, we're looking at a whole new monopoly realm of desktop to server to device systems.

There's one last hurdle for Redmond. Get MOOXML through ISO/IEC.

~ge~
posted by garyedwards

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

Microsoft significantly increases cross-integration of features with the company's other software.

Microsoft acquired most of the products making up its Dynamics product line, and what a motley crew. New products and versions bring the Dynamics line more into the Microsoft family, in part by convergence—or increased integration with the company's other software.

Tags: chains exchange hubs microsoft odf office ooxml opendocument openxml sharepoint xml

Posted by: garyedwards