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Looking beyond Windows 7 and Office; Pondering the alternatives | Between the Lines | ZDNet.com
Gartner Analyst Michael Silver wrote the study, "Windows 7 is all but inevitable". Here is a quote explaining why it's near impossible to migrate away from MSOffice and the MSOffice Productivity Environment:
There have been many organizations that have investigated moving off Microsoft Office, usually to a distribution of OpenOffice.org (including the free download, Sun’s StarOffice, Novell Edition and IBM Symphony), but relatively few have actually made the migration. Impediments include switching costs, issues with macros, stationery, databases and mail clients. For better or worse, for the past 15 years, organizations have chosen to overprovision and deploy a product that can do everything the most-advanced user requires to every user for the sake of homogeneity. Organizations that want to deploy OpenOffice.org (OO.o) need to come to terms with the fact that some users will still require MS Office and they will be forced to support a mix of products.
To Gartner, it makes sense to take advantage of viable perpetual licenses for Microsoft Office for as long as possible. The expensive product you already own will be cheaper than the cheap or “free” product you need to spend money to which to migrate.
Gray Matter : Open XML and the SharePoint Conference
excerpt: The trend in Office development is the migration of solutions away from in-application scripted processing toward more data-centric development. Of course this is a primary purpose of Open XML, and it is great to see the amount of activity in this area. We've seen customers scripting Word in a server environment to batch process / print documents or for other automation tasks. In reality Word isn't built to do that on a large scale, it is better to work directly against the document rather than via the application whenever possible.
The Open XML SDK unlocks a "whole nuther" environment for document processing, and gets you out of the business of scripting client apps on servers to do the work of a true server application (not to mention the licensing problems created by installing Office on a server).
comment: Gray makes a very important point here. The dominance of the desktop based MSOffice Productivity Environment was largely based the embedded logic driving "in-process" documents that was application and platform (Win32 API) specific. Tear open any of these workgroup-workflow oriented compound documents and you find application specific scripts, macros, OLE, data bindings, security settings and other application specific settings. These internal components are certain to break whenever these highly interactive and "live" compound documents are converted to another format, or application use. This is how MSOffice documents and the business processes they represent become "bound" to the MSOffice Productivity Environment.
What Gray is pointing to here is that Microsoft is moving the legacy Productivity Environment to an MSWeb based center where OpenXML, Silverlight, CAML, XAML and a number of other .NET-WPF technologies become the workgroup drivers. The key applications for the MS WebStack are Exchange/SharePoint/SQL Server. To make this move, documents had to be separated from the legacy desktop Productivity Environment settings.
Note that OpenXML is the only document format supported by MS
Constructing A SharePoint History: Microsoft SharePoint Team Blog
Wow. Why fight over the editing of Wikiword when you can make up your own history? The Microsoft Office - SharePoint Blog team is busy trying to reshape history from the inside out. This bookmark is going to require a ton of highlights and comments.
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it was clear customers wanted a more integrated and comprehensive solution from us. As just one example, they told us like they liked the WYSWIG HTML editing of SharePoint Team Services and the Web Part declarative and reusable editing of SharePoint Portal but wanted to use both models on the same site?
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On the application side, we were hearing customers wanted Office to go beyond personal productivity to organizational productivity and we had to decide whether Microsoft would invest in content management, portals, unified communications, business intelligence and many other new scenarios.
- 2 more annotations...
Microsoft's Answer to the Web Platform Threat? CHEAT!!!! - Microsoft Web Apps are actually Silverlight plug-ins - InformationWeek
For most of this decade, web developers have been suffering the shortcomings of Internet Explorer. Like 1998 limited HTML-CSS support. And nothing for the language of the Web - HTML+ :: HTML5, CSS3, SVG/Canvas and advanced JavaScript. That hasn't bothered Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) too much, because the company has historically focused on developing "real" applications that run only on Windows and don't use the browser as a platform. With the new Office web apps, many thought that Microsoft might actually have to experience the living nightmare that web app development can be. Yet the company has figured out a way to make things easier: cheat.
MIcrosof thas figured out how to provide MSOffice as Web Apps, without having to use the language of the Web: HTML+. Instead, they use protpietary formats, protocols and interfaces to create an interesting dichotomy - a rich MS-Web, and a poor, 1998 Open-Web.
Office Web Apps : Silverlight Web Platform Lock-in for MSOffice documents
How Does Word Web App Get Better With Silverlight?
Faster load performance, since typically fewer bytes need to be downloaded before showing the document.
Improved text fidelity at 100% zoom. This includes better text spacing and rendering.
Greatly improved text fidelity at other zoom levels not 100%.
Text will respect settings set in cleartype tuner, so you’re able to determine how much (if any) cleartype you’d like to see. The cleartype tuner is available on the web for older versions of Windows, and is included in Windows 7.
Improved accuracy of hit highlighting in Find.
Compatibility Matters: The Lessons of Massachusetts
This document discusses the primary reason ODF failed in Massachusetts: compatibility with the MSOffice productivity environment, and, the billions of binary documents in use by MSOffice bound workgroups and the business processes so important to them.
Compatibility matters: The Lessons of Massachusetts
Gary Edwards's List: Compatibility matters - The lessons of Massachusetts are many. Application level "compatibility" with existing MSOffice desktops and workgroups is vital. Format level "compatibility" with the legacy of billions of binary documents is vital. And "ecosystem" compatibility with the MSOffice productivity environment.
AppleInsider | Microsoft takes aim at Google with online Office suite
Microsoft has announced the next generation of MSOffice, and it turns out to be SharePoint at the center of the deep connected MSOffice "rich client" desktop productivity environment, and, an online Web version of MSOffice. Who would have guessed that one of the key features to MOSS would be universal accessibility to and collaboration on MSOffice documents - without loss of fidelity? No doubt the embedded logic that drive BBP's (Bound Business Processes) is also perfectly preserved.
Excerpt: "Office Web Applications, the online companion to Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote applications, allow you to access documents from anywhere. You can even simultaneously share and work on documents with others online," Microsoft says on its Office 2010 Technical Preview site. "View documents across PCs, mobile phones, and the Web without compromising document fidelity. Create new documents and do basic editing using the familiar Office interface."
Cisco "Thinking About" Going Up Against Microsoft Office and Google Apps
Knock me over with a feather. Now comes news that Cisco wants to challenge Microsoft Office and Google Apps.
Paul Smalera of Business Insider questions the wisdom of this initiative, insisting that Cisco must know it can't beat either MSOffice or Google Apps.
Maybe Cisco is fishing for help? Where is that wave-maker application Jason and Florian are said to be working on? :)
Excerpt: Cisco VP Doug Dennerline told reporters, the company is "thinking about" adding document drafting and sharing to WebEx, which already features instant messaging, online meeting and email services.
The better MSOffice alternative is the most compatible: SoftMaker Office bests OpenOffice.org
Article discussing the importance of office suite alternatives having a high level of comaptibility with MSOffice, the MSOffice binary formats, and the MSOffice productivity environment. ComputerWorld's Randall Kennedy has done exhaustive work comparing the conversion quality of MSOffice documents from two alternative office suites: Softmaker Office and OpenOffice.
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Finally! Someone who gets it. For an office suite to be considered as an alternative to MSOffice, it must be designed with multiple levels of compatibility. It's not just that the "feature sets" that must be comparable. The guts of the suite must be compatible at both the file format level, and the environment level.
Randall put's it this way; "It's the ecosystem stupid".
The reason ODF failed in Massachusetts is that neither OpenOffice nor OpenOffice ODF are designed to be compatible with legacy and existing MSOffice applications, binary formats, and, the MSOffice productivity environment. Instead, OOo and OOo-ODF are designed to be competitively comparable.
As an alternative to MSOffice, OpenOffice and OpenOffice ODF cannot fit into existing MSOffice workgroups and producitivity environments. Because it s was not designed to be compatible, OOo demands that the environment be replaced, rebuilt and re-engineered. Making OOo and OOo-ODF costly and disruptive to critical day-to-day business processes.
The lesson of Massachusetts is simple; compatibility matters. Conversion of workgroup/workflow documents from the MSOffice productivity environment to OpenOffice ODF will break those documents at two levels: fidelity and embedded "ecosystem" logic.
Fidelity is what most end-users point to since that's the aspect of the document conversion they can see. However, it's what they can't see that is the show stopper. The hidden side of workgroup/workflow documents is embedded logic that includes scripts, macros, formulas, OLE, data bindings, security settings, application specific settings, and productivity environment settings. Breaks these aspects of the document, and you stop important business processes bound to the MSOffice productivity environment.
There is no such thing as an OpenOffice productivity environment designed to be a compatible alternative to the MSOffice productivity environment.
Another lesson from Massachusetts is that "rip-out-and-replace" is both costly and disruptive. If it can be done. Amazingly, the City of Munich has been working on the rip and replace of MSOffice for over six years, and they are reporting that the project is only 60% complete.
There are alternatives to rip and replace. The Massachusetts choice was to re-purpose MSOffice using an ODF plug-in approach - a clone of the Microsoft Compatibiltiy Pack if you will.
Another alternative is to design from the ground up, a highly compatible office suite that can slide into these MSOffice bound environments without show stopping disruption. Softmaker Office is not alone in this approach, with Evermore Office and ThinkFree Office also proving that a very high level of compatiblitiy with MSOffice, the MSOffice binary formats, and the MSOffice productivity environment, is possible.
Excerpt: "In the kingdom of business productivity, Microsoft Office reigns supreme. Its dominating position atop the word processing, spreadsheet, and presentations heap seems virtually unassailable. Its file formats define an industry, and its component applications are often synonymous with the underlying tasks they perform. ......"
"There's no doubt about it: Office's roots run deep -- deeper, even, than its host OS, Microsoft Windows. People talk about switching Windows versions all the time. However, few souls are willing to walk away from their current version of Office for fear of losing interoperability with their peers, a fact that makes dislodging this sprawling, well-entrenched entity all the more daunting -- though many alternative productivity suites and SaaS offerings continue to try......" - garyedwards on 2009-06-30
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Add Sticky Note
Frankly, from Microsoft's perspective, the danger may have been overstated. Though the free open source crowd talks a good fight, the truth is that they keep missing the real target. Instead of investing in new features that nobody will use, the team behind OpenOffice should take a page from the SoftMaker playbook and focus on interoperability first. Until OpenOffice works out its import/export filter issues, it'll never be taken seriously as a Microsoft alternative.
More troubling (for Microsoft) is the challenge from the SoftMaker camp. These folks have gotten the file-format compatibility issue licked, and this gives them the freedom to focus on building out their product's already respectable feature set. I wouldn't be surprised if SoftMaker got gobbled up by a major enterprise player in the near, thus creating a viable third way for IT shops seeking to kick the Redmond habit.
- This quote is an excerpt from the article :) - on 2009-06-30
Why is Microsoft Office so hard to kill? | InfoWorld
This article compliments the previous publication, "The better Office Alternative - Softmaker Office". Good stuff!\n\nExcerpt: "It's the question that vexes free open source software advocates and commercial competitors around the globe: Why is Microsoft Office so difficult to dislodge from its perch atop the IT heap? Is it the exclusive bundling deals? The deep Software Assurance entrenchment? Steve Ballmer's backroom deal with the devil?"\n\n"The answer, of course, is none of the above (though some evidence of a Microsoft-Hell alliance exists). Rather, it's the Office ecosystem -- the vast library of third-party add-ons and vertical solutions built (with copious encouragement from Microsoft) on Office's extensive programmatic model -- that makes Microsoft's suite so hard to kill."
Denmark: OOXML vote won't affect public sector. ODF is too costly! | InfoWorld
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Lebech said Denmark considers OOXML an open standard, regardless whether it is approved by the ISO. "It would be impossible
for us to use only ISO standards if we want to fulfill the goal of creating interoperability in the government sector," he
said.
The Danish Parliament also mandated that public agencies consider the cost of using open formats. One of the main reasons
OOXML was included is because Denmark is heavily dependent on document management systems that are integrated with Microsoft's
Office products, Lebech said.
Denmark also found that requiring agencies to only use ODF would have been too expensive, mostly because of the cost of converting
documents into ODF, Lebech said.
"We wouldn't have been able to only support ODF," Lebech said. "It wouldn't have been cost neutral."
Forrester: Microsoft Office is in no danger from competition - FierceCIO:TechWatch
More comments from ge
Microsoft Office vs. the other guys - FierceCIO:TechWatch
A new report by research analyst, Forrester says that 80 percent of enterprise customers are using some version of Microsoft Office. This reflects the stranglehold Microsoft has on the office productivity market, despite increased awareness of alternatives such as Sun's OpenOffice.org suite, and the rise of web-hosted variants such as Google Docs.
I had a chance to comment on this brief lament regarding Microsoft's iron grip, desktop monopoly.
Amazing Stuff: ThinkFree Office Compatibility with MSOffice compared to OpenOffice Compatibility
This is amazing stuff. With all the talk about OpenOffice ODF compatibility problems with existing MSOffice productivity environments and documents, this comparison is stunning.
I stumbled across this <b>Compatibility Comparison</b> reading this article: <a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/thinkfree_only_complete_android_office_suite.php">ThinkFree Set to Launch The First Complete Android Office Suite</a>. <a href="http://www.dataviz.com/products/documentstogo/android/">Documents To Go</a> is currently the only provider of Word and Excel documents on Android.
The ThinkFree Office comparisons to OpenOffice cover a number of familiar compatibility issues, with layout at the top of the list.
<b>ThinkFree Write 3.5 vs OpenOffice Writer 3.0</b>
<i>".....When using a word processor to create documents, you really shouldn’t have to worry about whether your client will be able to see the document as you intended."</i>
<i>".... However, if you use a low-cost solution like OpenOffice, you should be prepared for frustrations and disappointments....."</i>
Can Microsoft Count on Inertia to Spur Office 2010 Upgrades? | Eric Lai - CIO Article Comments
This article left me a bit confused. The author poses an important question about the next release of MSOffice; MSOffice 2010. Or what others have called MSOffice 11. The question is whether or not end users will buy into the new features, and continue on the upgrade treadmill as they have for the past 15 years or so. Strangely though, there is no discussion of the traditional factors binding end users to the upgrade treadmill. Things like ever changing formats, protocols and interfaces. Nor is there discussion as to the impact of marketplace demands that Microsoft comply with open standards; including open document exchange formats like ODF, OOXML and HTML+ (the advanced WebKit-Ajax document model).<br><br>
The thing is, it's more than simple "inertia" that compels people to jump on the upgrade treadmill. The ODF pilot studies conducted in Massachusetts, California, Denmark and Belgium brought into sharp focus the difficulties workgroups have in replacing MSOffice. Years of client/server systems designed to run within the MSOffice productivity environment has left many a business process bound to the MSOffice suite of editors and the compound documents they produce.
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I left my response in the reader feedback section of this CIO article.
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<i>".....In the past, the MSOffice upgrade treadmill was unavoidable due to the file format compatibility problem. As workgroups and business divisions purchased new computers with newer versions of MSOffice, resulting file format incompatibilities made workflow exchange of documents impossibly frustrating. Eventually, entire workgroups were forced into upgrading just to keep day to day business processes working....."</i>
Google Apps no threat to Microsoft? Too Little Too Late
The race is on. Google will win the consumer Web. Microsoft will win the business Web.
Sadly i don't think there is any way for Google to challenge Microsoft with regard for the privilege of transitioning existing MSOffice bound workgroup- workflow business processes to the Web. Even if Google Docs could match MSOffice feature to feature, cracking into existing MSOffice workgroups is impossibly hard. Anyone who doubts this ought to take a second look at the Massachusetts ODF Pilot Study, or the recently released Belgium Pilot results. Replacing MSOffice in a workgroup setting is simply too disruptive and costly because of the shared business process problem.
The NeuroCommons Project: Open RDF Ontologies for Scientific Reseach
The NeuroCommons project seeks to make all scientific research materials - research articles, annotations, data, physical materials - as available and as useable as they can be. This is done by fostering practices that render information in a form that promotes uniform access by computational agents - sometimes called "interoperability". Semantic Web practices based on RDF will enable knowledge sources to combine meaningfully, semantically precise queries that span multiple information sources.<br><br>
Working with the Creative Commons group that sponsors "Neurocommons", Microsoft has developed and released an open source "ontology" add-on for Microsoft Word. The add-on makes use of MSOffice XML panel, Open XML formats, and proprietary "Smart Tags". Microsoft is also making the source code for both the Ontology Add-in for Office Word 2007 and the Creative Commons Add-in for Office Word 2007 tool available under the Open Source Initiative (OSI)-approved Microsoft Public License (Ms-PL) at http://ucsdbiolit.codeplex.com and http://ccaddin2007.codeplex.com,respectively.<br><br>
No doubt it will take some digging to figure out what is going on here. Microsoft WPF technologies include Smart Tags and LINQ. The Creative Commons "Neurocommons" ontology work is based on W3C RDF and SPARQL. How these opposing technologies interoperate with legacy MSOffice 2003 and 2007 desktops is an interesting question. One that may hold the answer to the larger problem of re-purposing MSOffice for the Open Web? <br><br>
We know Microsoft is re-purposing MSOffice for the MS Web. Perhaps this work with Creative Commons will help to open up the Microsoft desktop productivity environment to the Open Web? One can always hope :)<br><br>
Dr Dobbs has the Microsoft - Creative Commons announcement; <a href="http://www.ddj.com/windows/215802114">Microsoft Releases Open Tools for Scientific Research ...... Joins Creative Commons in releasing the Ontology Add-in</a>
DocVerse: Former Softies aim to make Office work like Google Docs | All about Microsoft | ZDNet.com
Two former Microsoft employees have started a company aimed at making Microsoft Office more like Google Docs — at least on the online-collaboration front.
DocVerse — a stealth startup formed by Shan Sinha, a former Microsoft SharePoint and SQL Server strategist, and Alex DeNeui, also formerly involved with SQL strategy at Microsoft — has begun offering beta invitations to a few hundred interested testers.
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