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

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

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