Companies Using MS Word "Out of Habit," Says Forrester

An anonymous reader writes "A Forrester Research report has found that companies use Microsoft Word for word processing out of habit rather than necessity and are beginning to consider other alternatives as the Web has changed the way people create and share documents. The report, "Breaking Up Is Hard To Do: The Microsoft Word Love Story," by analyst Sheri McLeish, suggests that businesses may still be using Word because it is familiar to users or because they have a legacy investment in the application, not because it is the best option." Microsoft surely knows that some other options are creeping slowly into the view of even the most Word-centric users, though. User I dream about smoking writes "Microsoft is testing new capabilities for Office Live Workspace, its online adjunct to Microsoft Office, that will make it a closer rival to online application suites such as Google Docs. Microsoft will start beta testing an updated version of Live Workspace later this year that allows users to create and edit new documents online."

Comments

Googles playbook

[TheKidWho]

Google took a page right out of Microsoft's playbook by buying a company who was already working on web based doc writers, effectively beating Microsoft to the game.

Personally I wouldn't trust important documents to stay on the web server. What happens when google goes belly up and starts shutting down their web servers? The bigger a company gets, the bigger they fall.

Re:Googles playbook

[Architect_sasyr]

On the other end of the spectrum, I don't trust other companies to protect my data. At least when data is stolen off servers I control I know who is to blame.

Re:Googles playbook

[somersault]

At least when data is stolen off servers I control I know who is to blame.

Employees who leave their workstations unattended and unlocked, or are too lax with their passwords? I doubt the weak link is often the actual administrator in charge of virtual security..

Re:Googles playbook

[deemen]

I doubt the weak link is often the actual administrator in charge of virtual security..

Surely not, but the fact that Google is now hosting business services, they are quickly becoming the information sink of the universe. They have a history of easily folding to law enforcement, which makes me uneasy about hosting corporate stuff online. I just don't like all the big brother business, and while I use GMail for personal stuff, I wouldn't start trusting Google with sensitive documents, memos etc.

Web based tools have another huge problem. You're at Google's mercy for upgrades, feature changes etc. Does anyone remember the crap they started with the iGoogle sidebar? That sort of stuff quickly discourages corporate clients.

Re:Googles playbook

[bberens]

I'm quite certain if someone big enough (like a GE) requested such a thing that Google would provide it. Until then, it's a great and probably welcome cost saver for mom-and-pops.

Re:Googles playbook

[umghhh]

It is correct that you should be wary about placing all documents on-line on machines that you do not control and that may lie in jurisdiction other than the one under which your company operates.
Few other worries would be - availability of service and capability - especially the capability of service is something which makes users that want a bit more complicated documents go elsewhere. This said I can imagine a lot of companies and private people using the service either because they do not know better or because convenience of having their documents 'always' on-line is something they prefer over other aspects of usage.

What always fascinated me is the ever present phenomenon of bad money replacing good money or in this particular context - worse suite becoming standard because people do not know better or do not care or both. besides this it is a great service - I use something similar too. Only not for work or sensitive private data.
In fact my less informed wife forbid me to store our household expenses data on the web even if 'no' to us traceable information has been included.

Re:Googles playbook

[deemen]

Good link. I think it just proves that you can't trust the competitors to defend your personal information either.

In the end, no one will defend your important documents more than you will, and that's why I doubt Google Docs will ever gain much market share in the enterprise sector until the day they allow it to be hosted on the intranet (like they do for their corporate search service).

For small businesses it might be an interesting solution though. I think most people don't know much about security in general (not just computers), so hosting things on a Google server might be better than on your spyware ridden home office computer.

Re:Googles playbook

[kabocox]

Surely not, but the fact that Google is now hosting business services, they are quickly becoming the information sink of the universe. They have a history of easily folding to law enforcement, which makes me uneasy about hosting corporate stuff online. I just don't like all the big brother business, and while I use GMail for personal stuff, I wouldn't start trusting Google with sensitive documents, memos etc.

Actually, this is as it should be. Any business should fold quickly to whoever happens to be the government or government organizations in their countries if they want to exist as an entity for more than a few minutes. One of the funny things of your statements is that you were afraid of the government coming after google for your corporate data? What has your company been up to where they'll need to be audited or searched?

On a side note, lawyers would love for all your company's email and electronic data to be stored at google. It would make searching through your stuff when you get sued much, much easier.

Re:Googles playbook

[jimicus]

It just takes some (pretty serious) change in your work-flow.

Ding ding!

It required you, someone who we can safely assume is fairly techie (or you wouldn't be posting to /.) to make some serious changes in your work-flow.

Multiply those changes by everyone in the organisation and throw in re-building existing business process which expect Word documents and you now know how come it takes something pretty huge to make an organisation radically change the day to day operations of their business.

Re:Googles playbook

[hairyfeet]

You DO realize that you just gave the "If you have nothing to hide" speech, don't you? Which is of course exactly what has become wrong with the USA and most of the west. There is a good reason why we must reject that argument and fight those that would implement it in government. Simply: power corrupts. There is a good reason why that phrase is so old and is yet used so frequently. Because it is a universal truth. Water is wet, the sky is blue, and power corrupts.

We have already had 8 years of abuse of power here in the USA, and closer to 30 years of corrupt laws that were obviously written by "he who wrote the biggest check". So if you don't mind all my data will be kept where I can encrypt it however I want. And considering the wholesale wiretapping and the risk of state sponsored industrial espionage IMHO you'd have to be really crazy or really naive to just leave your data where anyone outside your company can get at it.

And what about liability? Do they have a monetary guarantee to cover your losses if THEY get hacked and all your data gets handed to your competitor, thereby giving them your plans for the next 5 years? If YOU are in control of the data you can set security policy, limit who has access to which data, etc. But by passing it to "the cloud" you frankly have NO clue who has access to your data or if they are disgruntled and looking to make some cash on the way out. No thanks, doesn't sound too appealing to me. It just isn't worth the risks to me for a free doc editor and online collaboration.

Re:Googles playbook

[hairyfeet]

While what you say is true, what I have been hearing from my SOHO and SMB customers is that they are sticking to older versions, even going so far as to go out and buy more copies of Office 2K3 off the net rather than switch. Why? Because of the damned ribbon! If MSFT wanted to make such a radical change then there should have been the option of going back to the "old style" if the user so chose. Not doing so was a BIG mistake IMHO.

I have customers that have been using MS Office since the days of Office 97, some even earlier. They are so familiar with that interface they can "pop" the icon for what they want without ever even looking up. For users that have that kind of memorization(which I am finding out from OS repair is a LOT of users) switching around the locations of buttons is like a giant STOP sign. I watched it myself with little Velma at the insurance company I do repair and upgrade work for.

Little Velma could be talking at you and "pop" the icons for the features she needed without even looking up. She could crank out business letters and Excel sheets for customers like nobodies business. When I went there to add a printer to their network the owner was fuming how they had been "picked" as part of the pilot program for Office 2K7(they were formally on Office 2K3) and boy was she pissed. She said "You know how fast Velma and Lisa are. Go out there and look!" and sure enough, she was right. Little Velma would type for a little bit and then stop and stare at the screen, trying to figure out which button she wanted. Then when she couldn't find it she would have to call up the help and scroll through that for awhile. Pretty much threw the brakes on her productivity.

So if you want to know what is hurting MSFT, it isn't the competition, it is MSFT. IMHO they have lost their way and are floundering from one idea to the next trying to sustain the '90s growth they enjoyed which frankly ain't never coming back. They went from a company that made boring but usable business software and OSes to this giant multimedia mess that just screams "We can be as hip as Apple and as cool as Google! Yes we can! Quit laughing at me!" which is why my customers are hanging onto XP and Office 2K3 like a starving man hanging onto the last box of Fig Newtons. They need to fire Ballmer, bring back Allchin(and Darth Gates if they have to) and go back to making boring but familiar backwards compatible business OSes. Because mark my words. If they stay on the road that they have been following with Vista and 2K7, and remove the quicklaunch and taskbar for some Apple Dock ripoff, then Win7 will go down just as hard as Vista. Because if you are going to have to learn a new interface and buy all new gear, why not just go ahead and switch to Apple, which lasts longer, or Linux which has many distros with the XP interface?

File Compatibility, not Habit

[sunderland56]

Any company has a large number of existing documents. To switch to a different file-incompatible program would be silly; the cost of converting would far exceed any possible savings, not to mention the IT cost of changing every user simultaneously.

If OpenOffice/etc. are guaranteed 100% compatible with Word documents, they aren't promoting that fact very well. If they aren't compatible, they're not serious competition.

Re:File Compatibility, not Habit

[Mojo66]

Not only compatibility to own existing documents, but also when exchanging documents with other businesses, especially documents that need to be edited. From my experience in a scientific environment, those who don't use Latex use Word, primarily because they are lazy, but often also because out of necessity when multiple authors are writing up a paper for example. The quintessence is, neither Windows nor Word is Microsoft's cash cow, but the .doc format.

Re:File Compatibility, not Habit

[dougisfunny]

If they aren't compatible, they're not serious competition.

If they aren't compatible? Do you mean "if OOo is 0% compatible" or "if OOo is not 100% compatible" as there is a rather large difference between the two. Saying that you must be either 100% compatible or 0% seems like a false dichotomy.

It seems to me if it were an acceptable level of compatible (say 99/100 documents) that might be serious competition depending on the company.

Re:File Compatibility, not Habit

[Talar]

And this is of course why you should avoid getting locked in with a proprietary file format in the first place.

Re:I use Microsoft to fight the evil G$$Gle empire

[techprophet]

Where did you find MS Word for free? (I mean, besides torrent sites)
And when did it's interface become intuitive?

Re:Next up:

[Zeinfeld]

Companies are using Windows "Out of habit". Hopefully, the Obama stimulus will involve converting all government computers to use Ubuntu and hiring thousands of college students and underemployed programmers to work on FREE Open Source Software.

Where did you see that in the manifesto? I suspect you are in for a big disappointment.

The problem with Word competitors is that they are all pretty much carbon copies of Word. So there really isn't much to be gained from switching It costs a minimum of $50,000 with overheads to employ a white collar worker. $250 for a three year bulk license for Office is a rounding error.

Every one of the competing clones has the same broken idea that spreadheets, documents and databases are different things to be joined together by clumsy notions like COM.

Server issues

[Saint Fnordius]

On the whole subject of collaborative document editing, I think this is the real kicker. Many companies block Google's tools since that would mean storing company info outside of the company. Add to this the "beta" caveat that Google carries, and Google no longer considers itself liable if competitors get access to the info. After all, they did tell you it was buggy and all...

Are we really moving back to a server/terminal mentality? More importantly, is it a good thing that we are adding traffic to do tasks that were done with local media? I think corporations like the idea of collaborative editing, but they would prefer it of everything stayed behind their firewalls and on their own server's drives.

Re:Server issues

[TheKidWho]

Fact of the matter is though that the majority of these "cloud based" applications could have run on an old 486. How much does 486 capable hardware cost nowadays?

Re:MS Office has been online for years

[argent]

And it doesn't work very well. We're always playing musical chairs with documents whether they're on a sharepoint or file share.

Re:Of course its out of habit

[The Second Horseman]

Actually, Microsoft Office (especially Powerpoint, but also Excel and Word) are "better" than Open Office. There are readily available training materials. In fact, if you've got certain classes of Microsoft licensing, you can get the on-demand online training for your entire organization for next to nothing. And the integrations with 3rd party applications are a key feature. It doesn't matter if Open Office does 95% of what Microsoft Office does, if those key connectors that important departments or divisions need aren't available for it. And if you're the IT department, and you're still going to have a sizable portion of your organization using the Microsoft suite due to those issues (anything more than 5% to 10%, if they're key customers), why would you want to take the time to train your internal support staff to support both? There are probably 30 other applications that don't duplicate Office's functionality that they need to support.

If you're starting from scratch, and you're not tying together different pieces of software, or relying on add-ons, it's easier. But the typical Slashdot reader seems to be completely unaware that that's a problem.

And I still maintain that the rapid adoption of Sharepoint is going to keep MS Office entrenched. Sorry, but the current version of Sharepoint is really, really well done.

How hard can it be to switch?

[serviscope_minor]

How hard can it be to switch? This post will neither debate the advantages or disadvantages of word or wordprocessors. Just the latter... of users.

Having recently had to interact with the "real world" and wordprocessor documents, I must say that I was astounded at the quality of output of wordprocessors. The main problem is that even technically capable people seem to refuse outright to make any effort to actually learn how to use a tool that they spend hours per day sitting in front of. They treat a wordprocessor as a typewriter with font effects and images.

People still can't embed images properly. Either they're linked to some program which noone else has or a bitmap of a vector drawing so noone else can edit them. People still refuse to make even the most basic use of styles or cross referencing. It is absolutely astounding.

People will happily put in HOURS per document on a daily basis, fiddlind around with font dialogs, instead of spending 1 our learning how to use styles, for instance.

How hard can it be to switch? Users would go from not knowing how to use word to not knowing how to use openoffice.

But it really does amaze me how people can use the same tool all day, every day for weeks at a time, or even more and still not know many of the most basic features. Sure people want to "get work done", but that is best achieved by becoming an expert in the tools of the trade. When was the last time you heard a carpenter refusing to learn how to use a power saw because he "needed to get work done"?

Re:Of course its out of habit

[hitmark]

its faster to teach someone to use a specific program then to teach someone a generic way of thinking that can be applied again and again...

think of the modern education system as programming biological robots and one get a nice mental image of what both government and big biz wants us to be...

Re:Next up:

[Anonymous Coward]

Pull numbers out of your ass much?

"Beta" Label Doesn't Avoid Liability

[reallocate]

Putting a "beta" label on a product doesn't, by itself, relieve you of legal liability. That language goes in the terms of use that no one ever reads. In the end, your liability is whatever the courts say it is when you are sued.

Forced MS Usage Is Economic Discrimination

[reallocate]

Mandating use of Word or any other commercial product for homework seems to me a form of economic discrimination. Lots of families still can't afford a PC, much less Office.

Re:Next up:

[tepples]

Every one of the competing clones has the same broken idea that spreadheets, documents and databases are different things

A spreadsheet is a reactive program with its expressions in a cell grid. A document is a tree containing text and markup. A database is a set of relations with constraints on them. What do you consider "broken" about the differences between these data types?

Re:Next up:

[betterunixthanunix]

"That said, OO doesn't meet our needs as well, and has some memory issues (20000 PDF conversions later, it crashes)."

That is a HUGE number of conversions to be doing with a GUI based program. I do not know what your workflow is, but it sounds like you really need to be invoking ghostscript through some sort of shell script, or maybe in a Perl or AWK program. It is possible that you will actually see efficiency improvements, as this approach may allow for greater automation. As I said, I do not know your workflow, but this really sounds like a case where a little bit of shell scripting can go a long way.

The MS Office Habit

[NeilTheStupidHead]

I think that if anything will break users from their MS Office habits, the ribbon UI will. I found it very non-intuitive for a long time (10+ years) Office user. Frustrated with trying to get a hnadle on the UI, I finally switched over to OpenOffice and while it's *not quite* as feature rich as my old pre-ribbon MS Office, it's got a sufficiently similar UI that adapting took virtually no time at all.

Re:The MS Office Habit

[Anonymous Coward]

I would love to know what user characteristics determine feelings about the ribbon.

Oh, that's simple:

• Hates ribbon = hide-bound, inflexible mentality, unable to learn or think for themselves, works strictly by rote, person is probably replaceable by a small shell script
• Indifferent to or likes ribbon = normal levels of creativity and intelligence, able to adapt to change, willingness to explore new environments, figures out things on their own

HTH. HAND.

Once the activation server goes down

[tepples]

Your existing office suite isn't going to magically stop working.

It will once the activation server goes down. See all the problems with broken "purchased" tracks from DRM music stores. It also will once new copies of the non-free operating system for which the existing office suite was designed are no longer available, or when newly purchased hardware no longer comes with drivers for the operating system for which the existing office suite was designed.

And the IT cost of changing every user simultaneously is one you pay every few years with Office *anyway*.

But at least Access 2007 can run Access+VBA applications designed for previous versions of Access. OpenOffice.org Base cannot, as far as I know. This would make the retail management software package that my employer uses stop working.

word is familiar?

[sunshinekiller]

Are you serious, if anyone has updated ms office to 2007, its totally different. How could anyone be familiar with it. I use openoffice to make diagrams now because word is now a pain in the butt.

Re:Next up:

[msuarezalvarez]

Since it is open source it is harder for us to get timely issue resolution.

What kind of timeliness in issue resolution were you getting from MS?

I avoid MS Word out of habit

[Bromskloss]

That's a much better habit.

Excel is a much bigger issue

[samael]

Word is mostly used for churning out throwaway documents. Excel is used for long term storage of data - and there's a _lot_ of VBA code out there pulling data out of ancient spreadsheets.

Re:I use Microsoft to fight the evil G$$Gle empire

[techprophet]

Not free. The cost of Word was included in the computer price. That is how companies do it. Either MS pays them to in order to sell upgrades at a later point (in which case it was free) or the company buys bulk and puts it on there cheaper than you can, making it look free.

Re:I use Microsoft to fight the evil G$$Gle empire

[techprophet]

Converse:
What about its interface is intuitive?

Familiar != Intuitive

Re:Next up:

[nine-times]

the operating system that is used is not as important, as long as an open standard is in use.

I definitely agree with this. People get so wrapped up in the question as to whether the source code is free/open (which admittedly can be an important issue) that they forget about the issue of "standards". If you use open standards and open protocols, then it gives everyone the freedom to use whatever software they want without fear of vendor lock-in. Even if some particular person or group is using software that's completely proprietary and secretive about its inner-workings, you'll still be able to communicate, interoperate, and share information.

At the very least, I agree with attempts to ensure that all government documents are disseminated in open formats. Insofar as the government distributes word documents, they're reenforcing a Microsoft monopoly, and I don't believe that is appropriate. The definition of what is "open" shouldn't just be "some body certified it as such," but rather the law should have specific conditions, including surrendering the right to ever sue for patent infringement for implementing the standard.

Re:Sore spot with me.

[nine-times]

I understand your frustration, and if it were me, I would probably have called the teacher (calmly) to explain that we simply don't have MS Office, and ask her not to punish my child for that reason. If she wasn't responsive, I would take it up with the principle.

On the other hand, it seems like things probably could have been handled better on your end. Did you know about this requirement ahead of time? You could have tried to contact the teacher at the time, or else sent your son in with a note explaining on the day he turned in the paper.

Also, Google Docs will export files as Word documents, so you easily could have complied with that portion of the teachers requirements. Also, you could have chosen a serif font instead of Verdana (which is sans-serif). So you should have been able to get pretty close to what was required with your existing tools.

No offense to you-- dealing with kids and homework and teachers isn't easy. It is a bit crappy that they're requiring a proprietary format, but on a practical level, it shouldn't be that hard to find a way to do that.

Re:Sore spot with me.

[jc42]

If you don't get anywhere with the teacher, you should definately ask the school board to put the topic on your agenda.

Or maybe you should point out that the teacher has required a name-brand file format and font that are proprietary, and you don't have a license for them. Suggest that if these are required, then the school should pay for your child's computer with license to use such proprietary products. Mention that if they refuse to pay for your child's computer, you know some lawyers that will help you get a court order for reimbursement for the price.

(And you really should check with any lawyer friends about the legality of a school requiring that a student bring a name-brand product to school. It'd be more fun to push for a legal precedent that the school must pay for any such proprietary material required for classwork. ;-)

Re:Next up:

[ConceptJunkie]

What Obama should do is mandate the use of open standards on certified systems.

That's a great start. The problem is that Microsoft will simply subvert the standards process to its own ends and become the de facto standard. They've done it before.

Microsoft only likes standards when it can define the standard.

Other than that, I would highly support the concept.

Re:I have never liked word.

[nschubach]

There's all kinds of ways to please me.

None of them involve adding features for feature's sake and making everyone relearn the most prominent OS on the market by removing those features that people are used to. If MS would have made an "easy button" that turned the interface back to a more sane time without puffy windows and such, then I'd be happy. If they split the kernel/drivers from the interface and let me run the Win2K interface on the Win7 kernel, then I'd be happy. If they let me run the latest games on the Windows I have now instead of force upgrading, then I'd be happy.

More so, if they just included File Explorer from 2K, I'd be happy. Not as happy as bringing back the classic start menu as well, but at least I could sort of get some productive use out of the computer.