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Microsoft Renovates Office Suite as a Web Service
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"."
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.
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.