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

Spin Alert! /. Title is Misleading

[eldavojohn]

Microsoft Corp. said on Thursday it may offer a free, advertising-supported version of its basic word processing and spreadsheet software, in an apparent bid to fend off a nascent challenge from Google Inc. in the business software market.

Microsoft is not "planning" this. The title of TFA is "Microsoft mulls free Web-based business software." The definition of 'mull' is "to consider at length." Nowhere does it say this is for sure or that they are planning it. They are considering it. There is a difference. They are trying to figure out if it would be feasible to port MS Works to be accessible over the web generating revenue through in product advertising.

Maybe they'll decide to work on this. Maybe they'll decide the market is too crowded already. Right now, it's all up in the air -- I have found no sources claiming they are already planning it.

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.

I clicked on google.com/a

[crazyjeremy]

I'm glad this article came out... It provided me a link to google so I could experiment with their apps on my domain. I've been meaning to do it, but I never got around to it...

I wonder how many other people that didn't know about google's services, or just haven't gotten around to signing up WILL sign up because this M$ article reminded them to do so.

Re:I clicked on google.com/a

[FesterDaFelcher]

How often is this the case nowadays? If you've had 5 minutes of downtime in the last month, I'd be surprised. If you've had even 1 hour of downtime in the last 6 months you need to look into other options.

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....

[z0idberg]

you left out

e) Everything you create with it will be DRMed to within an inch of its life. (You will be able to use your document again, but only if you call Microsoft first and ask if its OK).

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.

[XenoPhage]

But they're mulling a web version of Works, not Office.

Have you looked at all at OpenOffice? I thought we did some pretty wierd stuff here that OO wouldn't be able to support, but as it happens, every file opened perfectly in OO and was just as useable..

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.

[aplusjimages]

Most businesses will keep using MS, but for home use I don't understand why more people use Open Office.

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

[JimDaGeek]

Well, the guy is right IMO. What bank do you work for? I want to make sure they never have any of my money.

I work for a fortune 500. Our financial analysts use Excel to do things and they can do their little VBA stuff if they know it. However, if the excel spreadsheet starts to become complicated, a project is usually opened to let a real programmer like me, create a real program. All the important financial data stays in a real database and then depending on how complicated the interface/calculations are, I would create either a web-based app or a fat gui app. This approach scales the best and is the most flexible allowing the interface to be PHP, ASP.Net, C# Windows.Forms, Java, etc. The admins don't have to worry about VBA macro-viruses, lost spreadsheets, corrupted spreadsheets, etc. Access controls can be applied to the data/application to be sox compliant. For example, all of our financial apps have the username/passowrd authenticated via Netegrity and then a DB lookup to see what rights, if any, the authenticated user has with the data/application.

There is no real way to secure an excel spreadsheet that is admin friendly. You could password protected it, but if that password is forgotten, oops, bye-bye data. If the someone takes home an excel spreadsheet with sensitive financial data and they get cracked, opps! Maybe they take home that spreadsheet make important changes and then lose the spreadsheet or have a hard drive crash, opps!

Real companies hire real programmers to create real applications that are administered, protected and backed up by real sys admins. Allowing a non-IT financial business person to have that much control over financial data at any company, especially an INVESTMENT BANK, is just crazy. And people wonder how customers data gets exposed all the time.

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.

Silly Question

[eikonoklastes]

Would you choose an ad-supported online version of Microsoft Office over other free options like OpenOffice or Google Apps for Your Domain?

Of course we wouldn't. But then again, this is slashdot you're trying to troll.

If data are stored at server

[cyfer2000]

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

Functionability.

[mikesd81]

The question is what are the functions that will be offered? Will you be able to make big posters in the document program or make a chart a different sheet in the worksheet? Another question is how obtrusive will the ads be? Security is also a concern. If you can just logon to the internet and use a p/l to access the data, it's even easier to leak information by just giving out the information. I think I'll stick to in house operations where I can limit folders to certaion people only and such.

Your secrets are double super safe...

[Duncan3]

[Bill G] Muhahahahahahahahahhaha...

[Steve B] Oh look, this guy is working on a patent for a new chair.

[Bill G] Muhahahahahahahahahhaha...

[Steve B] Yes Bill, now we'll have all their secrets, stop that.

[Bill G] Muhahahahahahahahahhaha...

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.

Submitter hosed the story with a false choice

[Anonymous Coward]

Would you choose an ad-supported online version of Microsoft Office over other free options like OpenOffice or Google Apps for Your Domain?

They're not even considering this!

They're considering a version of Works, which, as anyone who has used it knows, is a middle-school level of Office, at best.

If they actually do this, they'll look like hopeless noobs to anyone who compares their offering to Google's.

In beta now

[Grant,thompson]

A coworker of mine is in the closed beta program for the online office applications. He says it is pretty slick. So, I would say they really are planning, instead of just 'mulling'.

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.

Ad supported? I can see it now...

[jpellino]

30 second Flash commercials in any cell with a formula...

At least it will answer the longstanding question:

K23: =Revenue
K24: VISIT CLASSMATES.COM !
K25: =Profit!

You'd imagine that, wouldn't you?

[kahei]

Yes, there are many many large institutions that can't do without Excel, because there simply isn't another product that can do what it does. I've been struck how over the many large sites I've visited, the one invariant is Excel -- can't do finance without it.

However, I think you'll find that on slashdot the replies will divide into:

1 -- Check out OO.o. It does what Excel does.
2 -- LOLz0rZ u use Ex-Hell!!!1! U shld get a real db like MySQL!!1!! ...which I think says something about the difficulty of communicating requirements across different mindsets. Also, I guess it's easy to forget what a complicated and powerful environment Excel is; even understanding what people _need_ to do in it (over what OO.o does) is hard, I guess.

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

Slashdot likes competition as long as the competition isn't named Microsoft.

Bah. It's a pretty broad spread at this point.

I hate MS and Linux; but it kills me that more /. people aren't immune to Google, with their little "do no evil" honor system. If you asked me who was creating your biography behind your back, I wouldn't say "Microsoft"...

As long as MS is an active force against Google, they're more good than bad in my mind.

Quick

[nizo]

Someone patent "animated paperclip in a popup web window" and make yourself a bundle of money.

Re:and long term...

[ConceptJunkie]

Your term "bran power" does a pretty good job of explaining MS's output. They have a lot of "bran power" which is why they can squeeze out so much Office regularly.