Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft Office Faces British Invasion
jdkane writes "CNet reports that a small British software maker, Ability, plans to challenge one of Microsoft's most profitable markets by selling its low-cost package of productivity applications in North America.
Ability Office faces competition from Corel's Word Perfect, Sun Microsystems' StarOffice package and OpenOffice, it's free, open-source sibling. None of these products have captured a significant share of the market from Microsoft's Office.
Does anybody have any hands-on experience with the Ability Office suite, or are there any general speculations as to why this move will make a difference in the office software market (if not just for the bottom line of the software company)?"
Man, what a misleading headline. For a moment, I had this amusing mental image of fully armed British special forces storming Microsoft headquarters.
Curse you, slashdot!
Be the Ultimate Ninja! Play Billy Vs. SNAKEMAN today!
A new alternative would be great, but what is going to happen when MS office starts including buit in DRM on its .doc files? Hopefully some of this new software will start to bring people away from proprietary systems like this.
OpenOffice rocks. The new 1.1.0 is even better, since now you can make PDF files. Anyone paying $500 for Office XP needs to visit Openoffice.org.
I wonder what disrespects Microsoft more: pirating their shitty office suite, or hating it so much that you refuse to even pirate it.
I first used Ability office a good few years ago and I found it to be very fast and use less resources than the likes of MS Office. However I feel Ability has very strong competition from the likes of OpenOffice.org, which in my personal opinion is much better and "polished" although Ability's interface is a lot better for those brought up on MS Office.
My other sig is crap too
If only it would integrate itself into my OS, my handheld, my car, my toothbrush, my toaster, and my TV Dinners.
I'm not sure I could cope with an Office suite that didn't...
/sig
In other news, fear is struck into the heart of Hillshire Farms, as a small British consortium has announced plans to import "bangers" to the United States.
Given a choice between free speech and free beer, most people will take the beer.
People want to use at home what they use at work. MS Office is the "standard" for corporate America. When people change jobs, employers and the employee do not want to have to learn something new. A "standar" like MS Office offers certain benefits like this that are difficult to overcome, even given cost concerns.
Then, you have the educational dimension as well. Schools don't want to have classes for both. These days, community colleges are filled with people seeking Office certification (MOS/MOUS certification). Some companies and employees value these certifications. Schools play to that market and won't offer 2 totally different word processing courses. Too expensive. They cater to the market.
These factors are complex and difficult to overcome. Don't just scream "Stupid CEO! Office is too expensive!" before you understand all of the factors.
"If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid." - Epictetus
If StarOffice, with Sun's clout behind it, can't make a dent in the MS Office monopoly, what makes anyone think a tiny house like Ability will be able to. So long as MS keeps its licensing fees just below the threshhold where it becomes worth it for an enterprise to switch (and retrain a huge number of people, and deal with the % of files where the formatting won't transfer cleanly, etc.), the biggest competitor for Office 2003 is Office 2000.
It only runs on Windows. And its interface, which the manufacturers coyly call "industry-standard", is a Microsoft Office clone.
I wish them luck, but I have to wonder when people are going to realize that the way to challenge Microsoft is not to try to be Microsoft. Any product (yes, this includes a lot of Linux software) that slavishly imitates Microsoft is going to be written off, with some justification, as an inferior knock-off. IMO the M$ Office interface is a lousy one; how 'bout trying to write something better, guys, and see how that does? And while you're at it, make Linux and OS X versions -- in fact, try starting in those markets first. Yes, the pool of potential customers may be smaller, but there's no 900-lb. gorilla to compete with. I can almost guarantee that a fast, cheap, reliable, feature-rich office suite with a good non-M$ interface on those platforms would rapidly build up a dedicated customer base, and provide the company with a solid US revenue stream and name recognition while they get ready to tackle the Windows monolith.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
The first thing I noticed is just how much it looks like Microsoft Office. With that degree of visual compatibility, you could probably drop it in place with MS Office and users not even notice the difference....
Looks like we actually have a competitor now guys..
"Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is." G.W.Bush
I tried a free trial of it a while ago (came on the front of a magazine). It was usable, but not as good as OpenOffice. Unfortunately, after installing it, I was unable to print anything from any application, and opening Control Panel would cause a system crash. It seems that the program was installing dodgy system controls. Hopefully that's fixed now... I'm MS-free now, though, so I guess I'll never know...
Open Office is attractive, not because of the cost, but because it does not lock people into closed vendors and closed technologies. IMHO the whole goal is provide an escape to the abuses of copyright and EULA's. Offer people a way out, and they will come. They did with Linux.
IMHO we are looking at these packages in the wrong way. Instead of looking at them as a competitive alternative to Microsoft, we should be looking to them as a transitional tool to get people over to free (not as in beer) standards and software.
Regardless of what people think about it, MSaccess is still a staple of databases for business for the 'average guy'.
A business does not run on spreadsheets alone..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Until someone breaks the Exchange Server lock on Outlook clients, and until some office suite offers something way better than Outlook -- which is entirely possible, there's no going to be much buy in to another office suite.
You can read a (very favourable) review of Ability Office here. In their monthly "best buys" guide, they actually rated it above Microsoft Office 2002.
Ok, so i should have defined my statement more, its not the database backend that is the problem. ( i know about its hooks for external database servers )
Where are the forms, reports, etc in OO that a common user can get too and use as easily as they can with MSAcess? Remember they have ZERO training... they are not IT people..
Until then, its not a replacement for MSOffice ( plus we aren't even discussing the missing component of *integrated* groupware. )
Don't get me wrong i would prefer to give people an open alternative. but OO is not ready to **replace** MSO...
Nor is KOffice..
But they ARE getting closer..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
http://wvware.sourceforge.net/
.doc formats. It is used both by Abiword and Kword. Try it today, and in the unlikely event one of your documents dosen't import, You can report it so the library can improve.
This an open source library for Reading and writing
The biggest task in breaking the Office monopoly is the file formats, so help break it.
A German company called Softmaker is also working on an Office compatible suite. They have the word-processor done at this point (TextMaker). The benefit for a lot of us is that there are Windows/Linux/FreeBSD(!) versions.
I had never heard of them either, but I gave the free trial a spin, and it's a heck of a lot faster than OO. The Word import capability isn't quite as good as OO, but it's more than acceptable for most docs (and being improved).
I'm not connected to the company in any way, but I am a customer of the Linux version.
GRH
Don't forget that you can use ODBC to a real sql server + use SQL statements to get data back.
( true that's beyond the group of users I'm taking about, but you get the point I'm sure )
Also jet isnt really 'just using excel'.. its a bit more complex then that. ( though agreed its not as complex as a 'real' data server engine )
But my main point was the reports and data forms that Access provides *easy* access too. Something that a untrained user can work with and get something useable out of and not be stuck with just a spreadsheet of raw data...
No its not efficient, nor the best solution out there. But for a person with no training it is the best choice for them. And that is, like it or not, 99% of the business software target market.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I can't see it winning many points in an business environment, but it's well-pitched for the home Windows user.
Good enough to stop people just pirating MS Office or the more tech-savvy taking OpenOffice for a spin? Possibly not. Ability need to work at getting OEMs to bundle.
Ph-nglui mglw'nafh Gates M'dna wgah'nagl fhtagn.
Forms, mail merges, standard letters are all there under the AutoPilot.
Open the data navigator and you have tables and queries including QBE grids just like in Access. Reports are now present in OO 1.1.
Users with ZERO training and no experience of Access would find equal problems getting things going. I would suggest that users with zero training should not be doing table design, queries or reports. I know from bitter experience that the results of allowing this are frequently an unmanageable mess.
OO *is* ready to replace MS - I have used it for exactly this in commercial organisations.
There is no "standard" MS Office. Do you mean Office 95? Office 97? Office 2000? Office XP? There are many fundamental differences between these versions, both in terms of user interface and functionality, for example MS Access has been a major headache in terms of database and code upgrading between Office versions.
Every few years an organisation is going to have to retrain its staff, whether or not they stick to MS Office. Any school or collage who teaches or trains for a specific Word processor or spreadsheet is wasting time and resources. I have often found that MSOffice training *reduces* the flexibility of users. Untrained and novice users seem to switch easily between different types of word processors, whereas trained users expect buttons in specific places etc.
Yes I understand the reports and forms must be designed.. The point was that it can be done by an untrained employee with no help from IT. ( if they even have an IT guy, most small compaines just don't have one on staff.. ). My entire post was from that angle, the untrained basic user.
MSAccess doesn't require any manual coding to get a table created, a data entry form, couple of queries, then a report. All it takes for them is just a bit of patience and a LOT of mouse movements to get something useable.....
To do this is more 'traditional' environments would require some training and actual coding..
Access doesn't *require* this...
No, MSAccess isn't the most efficient way to do things, yes there are better more traditional ways, yes 'we' would do it differently.... but you cant expect a 7 dollar an hour secretary ( just an example, I'm not slamming secretaries, they just have other things to deal with that are valuable ) to be doing 'real' coding.. To do it "right" would take someone with knowledge and experience, which a *lot* of small companies just can't afford. So they use MSAccess and 'get by'.
I don't see how you can say creating a web form in PHP is as easy as dragging around a couple of widgets in MSAccess... ( again remember the user I'm basing this discussion off of, they have NO clue of what you are talking about doing )
As a side comment, with proper use of record locking you can have more then one user in a jet database at a time.. ( without extensive coding.. ), but I agree that it might be a bit more advanced then the 'average user' can handle creating using just the GUI and no added VBA code....
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Well said. Basically, the monopoly position of Microsoft Office (at better than 90%) means that using it is mandatory for anyone who interacts with the rest of the world, no matter how overpriced it is, or how much cheaper or equally functional the alternatives are. These days, if you want to submit your schoolwork electronically, it must be in Microsoft Word format to be accepted. If you want to be able to depend on using electronic documents and forms from businesses and government agencies, you'd better have Microsoft Office. The ability of competing products to read and write Microsoft Office formats is a lucky historical accident that will not be repeated -- for one, reverse engineering the formats is now illegal under the DMCA, so when Microsoft changes them again, the competitors will be SOL. Then there is the issue of needing to interact with Office 2003's DRM system. It is a safe bet this won't be legally possible either. Of course, even the current level of compatiblity provided by Office competitors is not perfect and fails when you need the more advanced features to interoperate. As I've said before, THE GAME IS OVER and has been since the DoJ rolled over. MS owns the computing world and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. Open Office and other "competitors" will continue to exist in very minor niches (under 5% of the market), but they have no chance of significantly replacing MS Office and will be very lucky if they are even able to exchange documents with it very shortly.
DRM could certainly become an issue at some point, should Microsoft choose to pursue it. IMHO if they did, all it would do is push more people to the various alternatives. They would be complete retards to even consider it.
What I would like to see is an office suite built around something like a framework similar to Eclipse. Not everyone performs Mail-Merges, nor does everyone require all the little drawing tools in MS-Word. If it was an open platform/open framework where extensions could be supported by pluggable bean components, I think that might be even more highly adopted.
Of course, one of the "Save-As" beans could be setup to do some form or fashion of DRM too if it was necessary but even that would be a plug-in, as would various plug-ins to translate between the various Office suites.
Granted, something like the Eclipse approach would be better served with components that can more easily be downloaded/integrated via some means of automation to insulate the average Joe User, but I think the idea itself would have merit. Not only this, but a single group, company, whatever wouldn't have to spend all that precious time working on 2% of the functionality that an even smaller percentage of the user base needs or uses. Small focused groups could work on those plug-ins directly outside of the core framework. In fact, I could envision an HTTP based delivery mechanism where your copy of "PlugOffice" could automatically go to certain trusted sites and install signed beans to give you the precise functionality you (or your corporate team) is looking for, or remove those components you don't find useful to keep the package light.
Just my $0.02
Spiritgreywolf
Never have a philosophy which supports a lack of courage
I did some work on the DOS version [1989] just after Migent, and a few hops before these people. I'm glad to see that it has a good home and hope they survive The Curse. (Of Ability, The Curse of Slashdot seems to have downed them for now.)
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
astroturfing 101 :
/.
pose your product as anti-ms and get free press on
Soon, I expect to hear people dissing Ability because it's commercial. This is counterproductive, however - even if it's not OpenOffice, it still brings diversity, which brings tolerance. Besides, there is a Linux/WINELib port. (www.uk.ability.com isn't Slashdotted yet.)
Litigious bastards
The website is not responding right now (Slashdot-effect, I presume).
The original incarnation of Ability appeared on the market years ago. It came from a Canadian company, Xanaro Technologies, on Bloor Street in Toronto. When the company went bankrupt, the assets were auctioned off. I had the opportunity to look at the source code (assembler naturally) and I also took a look at the market. At the time, there were a couple of similiar products. Context MBA (which was pCode running under an OS from UCSD) was already on the market -- but that market had already decided which OS was going to be used on PCs and that wasn't it. There was also a product called Word. Interesting product: in the days of character displays, this one had something like a "graphical window".
The integrated Ability suite came with a word processor, database, spreadsheet, comm package (good for bbs connections), a graphing package and some other odds and ends. The most fascinating part was the ability to hotlink spreadsheets and word processing documents.
The package came in an eye-popping black plastic case. The dies for the case must have cost a couple of hundred thousand dollars. The package was sold for about $400 or so but because Xanaro wasn't paying their bills, companies that did work for Xanaro were selling unshipped copies for less than $100. I got my copy for about $50.
I shouldn't have thrown it out. Oh, well.
I'm sure it's gone through a number of revisions since those days. For a while, you could find a second release for about $30 at a variety of stores (or in ads placed in PC Magazine).
Fond memories
(Signed) Gramps.
The main reason no office suite has seriouly challenged MS Office is that none can truly run on both macs and PCs. Sure, AbiWord and OpenOffice can run on mac under X11, but only the geekiest would ever use an X11 app on a mac to write a business letter or term paper. Many companies, universities, and government agencies use both macs and PCs. It would be unwise for such organizations to consider using an office suite that does not run well on all their computers. Also, in order for an office suite to catch on, it needs to work both in the home and at the office. I will personally never use anything but MS Office as long as it does not suit *all* of my Officeish needs, at work and at home. Apart from the hapless AppleWorks, I have seen no would-be Office substitutes that have really marketed toward home users. What needs to be done: 1) {Open/Star}Office, AbiWord, and I guess Ability need to have fully functional, aesthetically pleasing MacOS ports, not just hacked up porting jobs. 2) Someone needs to package these products with Macs and PCs intended for the home market. Until both of these happen, no one will seriously challenge office.
Maybe we Open Source types should turn ultra-honest and grass up all those business users of hooky MS Office copies we may come accross to the BSA. I mean hardly a day goes by without MS spouting on about the evils of piracy so we should do our best to help them by dropping those nasty pirates in it up to their necks by booking them a software audit.
By the time the BSA has done an RIAA on a significant percentage of companies it would interesting to see what happens to OO.org's market share. And if MS don't aggressively pursue major infringers there's cause for previous victims to sue for malicious treatment.
And the ultimate would be to see Steve Ballmer having to stand up and say "This is a positive thing for Microsoft to see all those pirates bought to book even though our market share has fallen 50%" and look like he really means it. On the other hand, maybe he'd like to turn the press statement in an interpretive dance for the nest MS conference.
Hmmmmmm..... Deep fried and look like Squirrel.
Migent was the US-based company put together by the U.S. and Canadian investors to market it, and Ashok's later invention, the serial-port-powered pocket modem.
I still have a copy of the old DOS version, and one of these days I'm going to get to England, and will make a point to visit the new Ability team. In my opinion they've doen a fine job, very clean and in the spirit of the original.
--dave
davecb@spamcop.net