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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."
The firm also undertook hundreds of thousands of hours of lab research
I had no idea those little white rats liked using Word. . .
"We are all geniuses when we dream"
- E.M. Cioran
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.)
A business survey a few years ago (3?) showed that over 60% of businesses were still running Win 2K and had NO plans to switch to XP. This is an ongoing problem for M$. More and more businesses are taking the "if it aint broke, don't fix it" approach to software. Cost control is the most important thing and if what they have does what they need they will not spend a nickle for the sake of change. There is no compelling reason to go through the constant upgrade cycle just to help M$ bottom line. This seems to be true for businesses of any size.
Professional Politicians are not the solution, they ARE the problem.
Honestly. there is ZERO reason to upgrade from even Office 2000. Outlook 2000 is 10 times faster than outlook 2003 and god help us on the mess that is outlook 2007.
Every time there is an "upgrade" in the company all of us in IT cringe.... Office incompataibility between versions is legendary (2000-2003 was a nightmare.. some images showing up backwards in documents, scripts not working and the dreaded warning on every launch has served to only numb users to real warning dialogs.)
Honestly, I can do things on windows 2000 and Office 2000 in the corperate environment that you can do on the latest and greates... but with far less expense in both hardware and software. And yes you still can keep it secure, there are apps to do that as well.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
'Our business model of course allows you to keep using Office 2003 - the software doesn't really expire,'
...Yet.
Office 97 - The last M$ Office you needed to buy. I've been running my copy for 10 years and it still does everything I need.
From a sales standpoint, Microsoft is pretty smart with Office. They always make sure it's 100% backwards compitable, but add enough changes to the .doc and .xls format to ensure that a document from the new version cannot always be opened in a prior version. At the companies I've worked for, this has typically been the driving force of upgrading.
... after a while there's real benefit in upgrading vs. replying to hundreds of messages with "Can you please save this in an earlier version of Word, I haven't upgraded yet". As long as Microsoft can give away or sell enough O2007 copies to large corporate accounts, there will be a trickle down effect to the rest of corporate America.
There's nothing more annoying than receiving an e-mail with a Word 2003 document and not being able to open it in Word 2000
Huh? Don't mind me, I'm just the new guy.
Your "business model" is a hold-over from the stone age, and does not have the authority to "allow" or "disallow" me to do anything. Any company/industry that forgets that deserves the fate they get from it.
I am not your blowing wind, I am the lightning.
If the old software isn't good enough now, was it good enough when I bought it? Furthermore, is the new software good enough? And by what date will it no longer be good enough? I don't think any business has needs that change so much that they need a new set of office apps after a few years. In fact, if they are doing things well, why change anything at all? The only reason you "need" to stay current is because Microsoft discontinues support on the older software. If NT support continuted, for example, I am certain that various companies would have been relieved to leave older production systems as is.
stuff |
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.
This just goes to show what I've suspected for a while... there is a problem with the software industry in general. The goals of a software company ultimately have a contradiction with the goals of software itself: The software company must fight its own products.
This is one of the reasons that, although I am a programmer by nature and by trade, I have a really hard time with the idea of starting up some kind of software company. I'd rather other people take those risks and hire me. As I see it, there are two problems with starting a software company:
1) Your product is inherently easily copied, giving it low value no matter how good it is. In fact, the more popular it is, the more likely it will be pirated, thus the better it is the LESS value it potentially has. This is definitely counter-intuitive.
2) Once you create a product that does what it needs to do and is easy to use, what then? Software eventually always reaches a plateau, and it becomes a question of "now what?" At this point software companies start to add "features" that bloat the software bundle and aren't wanted by customers, in the hopes that they've at least acquired a dedicated customer base that will buy the new version simply because it is "the newest version".
No, as I see it, it's better to do software in your spare time, and release it for free. Not because I'm some kind of altruist, but just because I see it as being a much more viable way to focus on the "product" rather than the "profits".
To clarify -- I'm certainly not any kind of anti-profit advocate. I'm a capitalist. I just don't see software and other information-based services as fitting into a capitalist model very well. As soon as you are a software company, you must focus on getting customers to upgrade, rather than on making sure they have a good experience with your product. Any industry in which it's in a company's interests to make sure its own customers are having a bad experience is in contradiction with itself, as far as I can see. I think the same thing goes for anti-virus products -- it's in their interests to make sure there are viruses around. They have built up their flagship products on the existance of something evil. There is simply something wrong with that.
This is why I tend to trust open-source products. I know that they have no reason to exist except to "get the job done", and therefore they do what they are meant to, and nothing else.
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.
The need to compel people to adopt a solution is not, in itself, an argument that the solution is unnecessary. Applying game theory, even given a dominant strategy consumers may actually choose the weaker strategy because they lack the cognitive level required to understand which strategy is better.
Many consumers will choose what is familiar over what is better, even given a clear-cut advantage. For example, many dial-up users will refuse to switch to a broadband connection, even if the offer has all of the following properties:
This type of decision making can also be observed in solar panel sales. A consumer who can afford a $25,000 solar panel setup and has the government offer a $25,000 subsidy (effectively paying $0 for a lifetime reduction of 80% of their energy bill), will still not have it installed. This behavior is a result of 3 related fallacies. The "Burden of Proof", "Appeal to Tradition", and "Fallacy of Pride".
Burden of Proof - It is much harder for Microsoft to prove Office 97 is inferior to Office 2007 than it is for a user of Office 97 to prove Office 2007 doesn't meet their needs as effectively as Office 97 does. This is because Microsoft does not know the needs of the user in question, only the user does, and therefore the burden of proof is on the person making the assessment.
Appeal to Tradition fallacy - This is what I've always had and it has always worked for me, therefore it must be the dominant strategy.
Fallacy of Pride - People want to believe the initial choice they made was intelligent. Changing strategies would imply that their previous choice was not intelligent. Therefore, the intelligent choice is to not change strategies.