Microsoft Plans New Server Products For Office v12

cbnet2004 writes "Microsoft Watch is reporting that when the upcoming Office 12 is released (what product reaches 12.0?), Microsoft will have a server version of Excel, Visio, and several other products along with it. So if you thought Microsoft was trying to dominate your desktop, now you'll have to watch out for your severs, too. According to the article, the new servers will fortunately not be for new "thin client" solutions."

Comments

Re:Interesting to see how they will top that.

[oni]

Office has about 100% market share in business. MS is really facing an uphill battle with their new release it has to be better than anything they have released,

I'm sorry, but that is not at all how it works.

MS will stop selling the old version, so when you buy a shiny new computer from Dell, you're going to get the new version of Office. When a business replaces a few of their computers, they will find subtle but noticable differences between the office suites.

Guess who always gets the newest computers. Management. So after a couple of instances where your boss sends you a powerpoint presentation and it doesn't look quite right, you're going to complain that you need the same version he or she has. voila. Everybody has the new version of office. It doesn't matter if it is any better than the old one. Hell, they could intentionally make it worse. It wouldn't matter. Nobody would notice because nobody uses the advanced features.

It always cracks me up when I suggest that someone try oppenoffice. "I don't want to learn something new," they say. But openoffice works exactly like MS office and you go to a new version of it every couple of years.

So, it's a licencing engine?

[Spoing]

I'm confused. If this isn't for thin clients, what technical/practical benifits do the 'server versions' of these apps provide?

Re:So, it's a licencing engine?

[hoggoth]

> what technical/practical benifits do the 'server versions' of these apps provide?

It's about time! How many servers out there are running a desktop Excel that is being COM controlled by a web application? Excel is NOT made to handle multiple simultaneous requests, and hangs, crashes, corrupts and does other nasty things when it is asked to.
I don't know how many times I've had to kludge together a solution to manipulating Excel spreadsheets or Powerpoint presentations in a web server application. None of the solutions are perfect. Controlling Excel and Powerpoint with COM leads to an unstable solution. Emulating Excel or Powerpoint data leads to buggy data (since Microsoft actively tries to F* up anybody trying to emulate their data formats).

A server-capable Office engine would enable me to manipulate Excel, Powerpoint, and Word documents in a web application.