MS Planning Free Web-Based Business Software

nieske writes "In response to Google Apps for Your Domain, Microsoft is also planning to release free web-based business software. The software will be ad-supported, but a paid, ad-free version will also be available. From the article: 'Revenue from software licenses for Office and the Windows operating system accounts for a bulk of Microsoft revenues. The challenge for Microsoft will be to make sure a free or, possibly, a subscription-supported version of Works won't hurt sales of its dominant Office software, which accounted for a quarter of the company's $44 billion in sales last year.' Would you choose an ad-supported online version of Microsoft Office over other free options like OpenOffice or Google Apps for Your Domain?"

Comments

Oh wonderful....

[KoshClassic]

Knowing Microsoft, it will have features like:

a) it only works with Internet Explorer
b) documents saved with it will never load on anything but Microsoft products
c) shortcuts to it will be placed in highly visible locations in all future versions of Windows
d) it can only be accessed from PC's running licensed copies of Windows

etc. etc. etc.

I'll stick with Google.

Re:Oh wonderful....

[nine-times]

Not to mention that, unlike Google, Microsoft has to worry about cannibalizing Office sales, so they'll probably hobble it something fierce.

Re:Oh wonderful....

[crazyjeremy]

You also forgot...

f: Media infested with its DRM will not work with next generation MS software. Like Zune

Yes. I would choose MS over the others.

[chroot_james]

I need excel and there is no two ways about it. Until other spreadsheet systems can absorb all the work my company (a large investment bank) has done and continues to do in excel, we won't even consider using anything else. I imagine MANY slashdotters are in the same boat.

Re:Yes. I would choose MS over the others.

[HugePedlar]

You would choose to use a web-based spreadsheet in a large investment bank? I don't think many slashdotters are in THAT boat.

Re:Yes. I would choose MS over the others.

[chroot_james]

I've tried Open Office. I used it all through college, actually. The thing that excel has is the vba programming. Before everyone flares up, we simply can't avoid vba and excel. All the business people learn to use it and it makes some heavy duty calculations TRIVIAL to model in a programmatic way. These people know excel and don't care to learn the best way to do things. They don't even care about making the spreadsheet clean and easy to read. If they can make it crunch the numbers correctly, they're happy. Since these are the people who also bring the dough into the system, we have to adapt to what their needs are. It's not necessarily sharing the data, though it would be easier than having to worry about actual files. It's about how quickly something can get the job done and when people already know excel, excel wins.

Re:Yes. I would choose MS over the others.

[MeNeXT]

Other systems can absorbe and truly surpass the work your compnay has done on excel. The choice was yours to limit, to tie your company into a closed system. Now your hoping someone will get you out. The limits are imposed by your software and your choices.

My company's work is not tied into one vendor, it was more expensive at the start but today our work belongs to us. Now it costs us less.

You should be asking why Excel limits you so, and not how someone will save you the bundle that it costs you to keep up to the latest and greatest.

This Would Fail

[Anonymous Coward]

Businesses will buy the locally stored software. Individuals will use the free stuff online that comes from companies they know and trust online like Google. There's no room for Microsoft to go ad-based. It just won't work.

If data are stored at server

[cyfer2000]

Lost laptop computers won't be news worthy. What a boring world it will be.

FUD campaign

[Colin Smith]

MS does this when competitors announce new products they hadn't thought of themselves. They suggest they're going to move into the market and essentially wipe out the competition. It's to keep the microsoft shops waiting for their product. It seems to take them about 3 years to come up with something worthwhile, if they ever do.

Google's Office Web Appliance

[vhogemann]

Well,

Google strategy probably is use the feedback from their public betas, and free services, to devellop an WebAppliance that can be easly deployed at a business network, such as their nice Search appliance.

I can see they releasing a document management system integrated with Google desktop, corporate Gmail,Search and their online office suite. Kind of a wiki were you can post webpages, documents an sheets that can be collaboratively edited online... everything nicely packaged on a 1U blue box ;-)

Also, somewhere, someone is already thinking about an OpenOffice plugin, or KDE KioSlave, or Gnome GFSplugin, that will make it possible edit these online documents directly from Write/Calc, KWrite/KSpread and Abiword/Gnumeric... And this will be the killer feature that will make MSOffice obsolete.

Mark my words... Microsoft couldn't take Google out of the search business, but Google has a good chance of taking the corporate office business crown from Microsoft.

Re:Spin Alert! /. Title is Misleading

[gooman]

Excellent point, and a very import distinction to make.

Like it or not, Microsoft is the 800lb. Gorilla in the room and when they speak, people do listen.

This could merely be an effort to take attention away from the alternatives, while Office2007 is still under construction, then after Office launches, Microsoft can declare the idea impractical.

Even if they do something in this area, they are not leading, inventing or innovating and it will no doubt be crippled in some way so as not to damage the cash-cow that Office has become.

I always remind people that Microsoft is a marketing company, NOT a technology company. They DO NOT innovate. They are extremely greedy and will do whatever they can to keep the cash coming in.

I'm betting this is just a bit of "me too" fluff to keep the press folks distracted.

Re:Spin Alert! /. Title is Misleading

[truthsearch]

I don't think Microsoft has ever decided a market it too crowded to enter.