Microsoft's Battle For Software Mindshare

chemicaloli writes to mention a BBC article about Microsoft's battle to convince users they need to buy new software. The article explores the changes to the UI in Microsoft Office 2007. Along with the changes prompted by the adoption of the 'Ribbon', the article also looks at some of the software's new features. From the article: "'One of the biggest challenges... is to fight that perception that old versions of software are good enough,' said Microsoft's Chris Capossela. Office 2007 goes on sale to business on 30 November, the same date new operating system Vista is launched. 'Our business model of course allows you to keep using Office 2003 — the software doesn't really expire,' said Mr Capossela, corporate vice president of the Microsoft Business Division. Many large businesses will have Office 2007 delivered as part of existing IT contracts but small business and individual consumers will need persuading to make the change."

Comments

convince them the old isn't good enough?

[yagu]

Therein lies Microsoft's problem -- each new iteration of their software all of a sudden must render their older generation software "not good enough", giving the lie to all earlier claims about previous generations of product. This is the classical Microsoft business model. Microsoft is about selling a product, not providing customer satisfaction.

This may be a bigger shift for Microsoft than the internet was, retooling the way they think about business as a service and value-added support company rather than a company trotting out latest and greatest generations of (already quite mature) software (sheeesh, how many more features can you conceive for today's word processors?). And, have you looked at the new interfaces for their "got to have" Office products? Maybe good, maybe not, but who in their right corporate business mind would foist yet another learning curve on their entire company for yet another interface?

Considering Microsoft has never really cared for the rest of the world (in my opinion), their entire corporate mentality must reverse field, not something I'm sure they're even capable of... consider the latest rantings by Ballmer about a peek under the Microsoft covers about why they really forged the Suse/Linux deal. More evidence Microsoft continues to be about controlling, not collaborating. Does Microsoft even have the personnel capable of shifting their mindset? Time will tell.

Microsoft's stranglehold on the economy may be loosening as technology, distribution of technology, and support for technology become more about the people. That (in my opinion) can be only a good thing for the world.

(an interesting aside... my editor spellchecker offered Blamer as an alternative spelling for Ballmer... snicker.)

Re:convince them the old isn't good enough?

[sBox]

At the past two companies I've worked for, we've found that OfficeXP has a good enough feature set for our users. Office2K was buggy and crashed, Office2K3 was an added expense for features we didn't even need with XP. About the only reason to upgrade would be for security patches or if you are in an audited environment, which most small and medium size companies are not. Outside of an audited environment, the only way I can see an upgrade is to foist an interface change on Office and sell it via the channel. Once a home user gets used to that, they'll start clamoring for it at work. And we all know what happens when a CEO sees a nifty trinket.

Re:convince them the old isn't good enough?

[fotbr]

Not entirely true.

There are those that are in windows-only shops with a very strict IT policy that would like the features, but are not ALLOWED to use OpenOffice.

And then there are those, like me, that actually prefer MS Office over OpenOffice -- especially the new interface.

Re:convince them the old isn't good enough?

[gEvil (beta)]

There are instances of backwards compatibility issues, even though Microsoft claims the file formats are the same. I recently received a Word document from someone that had a table that spanned 5 pages. The first page appeared fine, but the table was then truncated on pages 2 through 5. Essentially, it ran off the bottom of the page and started on the next page further down the table than it should have (ex, page 1:a,b,c,d; page 2:e,f,g,h [table cells running off the bottom of the page]; page 3:k,l,m,n [runs off bottom]; page 4:r,s,t,u etc). Both Office 2000 and OpenOffice exhibited this behavior. The only thing that would open it properly was the Word 2003 60-day demo from Microsoft's site. Thankfully, I was able to use that in a VM to do what I needed to do to the file.

So while you may not have encountered issues, they do exist and there are people out there who have had to deal with them.

Re:convince them the old isn't good enough?

[electroniceric]

You hit the nail on the head. Not only is it a question of convincing people to want the new product, it's convincing anyone who's made Office a platform to change platforms. I wrote a system for my company in Access (see side note below), which we'll use until a year and change from now when it will re-architected in Java as we grow. All the users are running Office 2003 right now, and I grit my teeth and pay the $400 Microsoft tax on every new workstation for a bunch of features we rarely use and a few key ones we do. In an effort to push Office 2007, however, Microsoft has told all it's VARs not to sell volume licenses of Office 2003 anymore. So I'm stuck buying up old OEM licenses, which really sucks from a maintenance and license management perspective. So not only do I have no interest in a new UI for the same old word processor, but I'm being squeezed by a vendor who's attempting to bully me into buying a product that breaks my platform. Call me a Linux fanboy, but that kind of crap really makes me hate Microsoft and any other vendor trying to put the squeeze on my freedom to assemble a platform that fits my needs and budget. The lab software market is full of that approach, and many people using lab software hate those bastards, too. One of the best parts of the maturation of open source is that it has helped bring power back to the buyers, whatever combination of open source and proprietary licenses we mix.

An aside about Access. It's really a rather good RAD tool for whipping up quick, useful client-server database applications. Access' "continuous forms" view and its reporting are top notch UI building blocks, and cost quite a bit of cheddar to buy or build equivalents in .NET. If Microsoft were more comfortable with the value-add chain, they could open a pretty big migration path from Access upward. Basically, trash Access' stupid everything-in-one-file binary format in favor of creating text source code files and compile to .NET executables in your language of choice. Then you get all the utility of Access' default data bindings and event handlers but in a format that you could fairly well convert into a mid-size client-server app that you could probably build and test. Instead they have left Access stuck executing VBA that's compiled inside the big munged binary file, and totally inaccessible by any decent test tools. My interpretation is that they're trying to keep people who do use buying licenses for Office Pro. That works, but it leaves you shopping elsewhere when your app outgrows Access. If they incrementalized the value you got, people like me would be distinctly more interested in them in the long run.

Why upgrade?

[Karzz1]

"Many large businesses will have Office 2007 delivered as part of existing IT contracts but small business and individual consumers will need persuading to make the change."

So, is this an admission by MS that there really is no compelling reason for an upgrade? What I mean is, if someone has to be persuaded to buy it, what is the reason they would need/want it?

A problem for hardware companies too

[cucucu]

Hardware companies compete with their own products too.
I once worked with a company that was getting increasing competition from their own hardware being sold on eBay.
They started offering discounts for returning the old hardware when upgrading. And then they destroyed the returned items.

At least the EULA does not allow you to pass the license to another licensee once you upgrade - that would be a Microsoft nightmare. Each new version would overflow the market with very cheap licenses for the previous one.

Re:Hmmm

[ohearn]

The spelling and grammar checks in Word have gotten much better over the years (don't think the grammar check was even added until Office 97), but other than that not much has really changed.

I swapped from WordPerfect to Office 97 when in college because that was what most of my professors demanded. I swapped from Office 97 to Office XP simply because my wife already had a copy and that was what I had at work to make taking work home easier. I have had no reason to "upgrade" again.

There have been several occasions where I personally like the older versions of MS products better than the new version. Money was one of them (my wife likes it, personally I always did budgets in a simple speadsheet). The newer versions of money want to store your information on the web instead of on the local hard drive by default, constantly wants to connect to a MS server, and had more bugs than the older version. Even the wife swapped back to the old version pretty quickly, but it messed up the data files so badly in the process that we had to just scrap everything and start over.

IE7 is almost in the same category for me. I appreciate the attempts at better security, but thought the previous layout was much better. Sorry guys at work IE is the only option I have.

Re:Doesn't really expire...

[H8X55]

Actually, I was thinking the same thing. How much longer before their license subscription service offered to big businesses is their business model for home users as well. Pay $399 USD for 36 months of Office, and get upgrades from free. Month 37? Oh, that's another $399 licensing fee.

I've been using Office since '95, was very pleased with Office 2K, Office XP (2001? 2002?) wasn't bad. Office 2K3 is a little bloated for my taste, but the point is, I'd rather keep using 2K for FREE than pay the MicrosoftMonster a couple hundred bucks. When I can't use 2K anymore, I'll switch to Open Office.

in 2007.. i'll be upgrading to open office..

[Anonymous Coward]

For everything..

There really is no reason to keep office, we don't use macro's or .net programming.. so.. why bother.

Only keeping outlook 2k3 because email is hosted via exchange, and delivered via rpc over http.

Open office is mature enough that I have no issue putting it on our 70 desktops.

at $300/desk savings.. maybe i'll have enough to upgrade a few PC's instead of trying to make bloated software run on old machines.

Win95 + Office95

[wandazulu]

I do some consulting/pc maintenance for a small company that still runs their machines on Win95 and uses Office95 for their work, and the combo still runs fine. The majority of their "business" apps are web based, and Firefox runs fine on it, and as far as anyone is concerned, as long as the document comes off the printer correctly, no one cares what program created it.

It's interesting to go there; it's like time has stood still since 1995 and you realize that "good enough" can go back pretty darn far.

Re:While IT staff around the world convince otherw

[erpbridge]

Also, if you're dealing with a lot of users across a slow connection (ie 200 users who access their e-mail on the Exchange server across a T1), you get some bandwidth savings using cached mode.

With Outlook 2000/XP and Exchange 2000, you keep a constant RPC connection open (for mail notification and transfer) and you transfer mail at full size.

With Outlook 2003 (using cached mode) and Exchange 2000, you contact the server once every 45-90 seconds (rand) and check for new messages. Messages transfer in a burst, but at full size.

With Outlook 2003 and Exchange 2003, you get same as above, but the messages are actually compressed before the burst.

Yes, you get a 30-60 second delay that you didn't have with Outlook 2000/XP, but the bandwidth savings help quite a bit. Especially when the people in that building are using other applications across that link too (Web, constant telnet, Terminal Services).

Re:While IT staff around the world convince otherw

[bmajik]

1. Cached Exchange Mode. All versions of outlook without this are absolute unusable garbage. This feature was what allowed me to stop using PINE+IMAP at work.

2. RPC over HTTPS. This is _huge_ for mobile workers.

I happen to really like Outlook 2007. I've not noticed any speed problems with it. They've done a good job since OL2k of removing possible high-latency calls on UI threads, making the client much more interactive in a variety of situations. In 2000 Outloook+Exchange were unusable. I remember the exchange team having an "SP1 ship party" and thinking I'd run over there and choke all of them, perhaps screaming "get back in your f@#$king offices and fix this bullshit until i can read email as quickly and easily as me and _50000_ other students could using pine+sendmail on a 2 proc dec alpha"

Outlook and Exchange have gotten _much_ better since then. I can use them without wanting to kill people, which has left me free to be angry about other Microsoft intolerables, like DRM, windows stealing focus, and long path name support :)

Re:The Classic Battle...

[SABME]

I used to believe this too.

I believed that all you had to do was give people the chance to learn the basics of what they were doing with a PC, the basics of what is actually happening when they open a file or copy a file, or start a program, and some magic light would go on in their heads and they'd "get it."

Then I started working in desktop support.

This was back in 1990. There was no web and no email at work (except for a few executives who used Procomm to connect at 33.6 kbps to the corporate mail server). Most companies had adopted PCs for use, but many, like mine, were still integrating them into their daily business tasks. We were experimenting with this newfangled thing called "desktop publishing," and the accounting department was debating the relative merits of Excel for Windows 3.1 vs. Lotus 123 for DOS. Some holdouts insisted on using Quattro Pro.

I was young and idealistic. I thought that the only problem most people had was lack of familiarity with these new, powerful tools. I thought a little education would fix it.

Boy was I wrong.

I gave seminars, I took time to explain what was happening every time I fixed a problem for someone. I wrote simple memos with pictures -- "How to Format A Floppy Disk" was one of my masterworks, as was "There are two kinds of hard disks -- those that have failed and those that will fail. So make backups!". For five years, I tried, and I believed I could make a difference.

I gave up and switched jobs. But I learned something from the experience.

I learned that the problem is twofold: 1.) the vast majority of the population doesn't care how a computer works and 2.) the vast majority also lacks the mentality required to understand what's happening inside a computer. I'm not saying these are unintelligent people; I'm saying there's a certain mindset that you need to understand what's happening in your computer, and you either have it or you don't. Just like some people really get off on balancing a ledger, or closing a sale. I've worked with janitors who went from not knowing how to turn the machine on to writing Macromedia Director presentations in less than a year, and I've worked with lawyers who were baffled at the complexities of saving a file to a floppy (and who never seemed to quite get the hang of it).

Call me cynical, but my conclusion is that's the way it is, and that's the way it always will be, regardless of how much education people receive.

Re:Microsoft is smart/sneaky with Office

[fruey]

I'm not a fanboy, and I think the right business decision in your case is to stick with Office.

However, creating the template from scratch in a given piece of software (MS Office) and then hoping it will work elsewhere... is always fraught with problems.

If your template is in an open format (this is the most important part) like RTF or ODF, then you're much more likely to be able to change software when required. MS .DOC format is what is locking you to Office, and that's the way they want it.

Re: File Format Problems

[TaoPhoenix]

I wish to complain about backward incompatible format changes. I had one of our junior associates send me an .xlsx (Office 2007 Excel) file as an experiment. My machine with Office 2003 couldn't read it even after I downloaded the compatibility pack.

I think we need a little more of "Good Enough" in the world so we can "just get some work done". I'm looking forward to the non-sales atmosphere of Linux.