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Microsoft Renovates Office Suite as a Web Service

Posted by michael on from the you-will-be-assimilated dept.

foobsr writes "According to an article in EcommerceTimes, Microsoft is trying to migrate Office from a product to an online service with a focus on automating collaborative work. Quote: 'Making collaboration faster, easier and more efficient will be the next revolution in worker productivity, and we want to be in the forefront,' said Peter Rinearson, vice president for new business development in Microsoft's information worker group"."

8 of 391 comments (clear)

  1. Hello, vaporware! by revscat · · Score: 5, Interesting

    But for Microsoft, which is starting to see its growth slow, reinventing that suite of old reliables including Word, Excel and PowerPoint has become nothing less than a key to its future.

    Umm.... Yeah. I remember when MS finally decided to get on the Internet bandwagon, and started putting "Internet functionality" in every single one of their applications. Remember how poorly that was implemented, and how little of value they were actually able to add to the various Office apps?

    I don't see this as being much different. Buzzwords, ooh-ahh's from the PHBs, but little increased value for the end user. Collaborative PowerPoints? Um... Ok. Isn't that what source code control systems are for, even for binaries? Pure vaporware, baby. I mean look at this:

    The new design makes programs like Word, Excel and Outlook e-mail part of collaborative work spaces. In theory, an employee working in Word could tap into all the corporate information on a customer or project.

    What? What the heck does that even mean? Sounds like they're dreaming about some sort of uberlayer on top of all Office apps that will let you somehow get information no matter where it's stored. AND do it collaboratively.

    *cough*

    Righty-o. Believe it when I see it, chappies.

    1. Re:Hello, vaporware! by Erik+Hollensbe · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I'm sincerely curious, how do they implement version conflicts? To be clear: when one person checks in something, and another person has work to check in, that doesn't contain the work of the first person and decides to check it in, even though it contains modifications that the first person has also modified, what happens?

      Now, this is a fun enough problem for diff and merge, and can be a nightmare for the developer, and we're just talking about text.

      When you get into laying out text, inline images, and all the other crap that a powerpoint presentation can have....

      Just curious. :)

  2. I hope they don't mean a web service by JoeShmoe950 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I hope they don't mean a web service as in a C#/ASP.NET web service. I played around with those some. They are very fast and easy to work with, but not half as responsive as a native application. I've always liked plain old simple programs, and hope MS changes there mind if it is anything like what I've used (I'm probably wrong and it isn't, didn't RTFA).

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  3. Internet Explorer by POWRSURG · · Score: 4, Interesting

    What are the odds that these applications will run on something besides IE? Is this the real reason Microsoft was talking about making a new version of Internet Explorer?

    Or am I completely misinterpreting what they mean by Web services?

  4. Corel already had this by Lxy · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I remember working on a web version of Wordperfect 10. It was using a tool like Citrix or Webex to deliver the applicaion over the internet from Corel to your desktop. Pretty neat way to try out software IMHO.

    I see now that they've dropped in in favor of a stripped down demo download. I'm curious to know why they took it down, as it might be a good reason for Microsoft NOT to run Office as a web service.

    Anyone remember this? Anyone know why it went away?

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  5. If You Give a Software Pirate A Web Service... by rfunches · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Kinda makes you wonder what reverse engineers, keygen programmers, and software crackers are going to do when they have to pirate a web service instead of a normal app.

  6. Licensing? by pjdepasq · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I'll be really curious to see how the licensing will be handled. While this model of "services" may be OK for corporate and home use, I wonder how it will go for educational settings.

    Currently many of my students have Office on their "home" PCs. They can also use it in the labs, since we have a campus site license.

    However, if the software moves to the web and is licensed by campus, will the software's access be limited by (campus) IP address? What happens to the kid that goes home for break and needs to use Word or Excel?

    Sure, the campus can add some kind of password system to let the kid access the software via the campus license from home, but now you are adding work to overworked (and underfunded) IT departments.

    Yeah, this is going to be interesting to watch.

    OK, I'd love to see OpenOffice or some other option take off, but our campus is so bound to Word (hell, I get three line memos in a Word doc attached to an email), I can't see the secretarial force even open to considering a platform change to other software.

  7. Re:Much needed by hazem · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Sometimes meetings are needed. But there are a few good ways to keep them good and short.

    1) remove all chairs from the room
    2) no snacks, water, coffee or anything else (and forbid people from bringing them in)
    3) schedule all meetings at 4:30pm. Anyone who talks after 5:00pm has to pay overtime to everyone out of their own salary
    4) each person can have 2 minutes to talk. Any time over that costs them $5/minute/person in attendance
    5) each person can have 3 slides. Any slides over that costs $5/slide/person in attendance