The Hidden Costs of Microsoft's Free Office Online

Michael_Curator writes "Despite what you've heard, the online version of Office 2010 announced by Microsoft earlier this week won't be free to corporate users. Business customers will either have to pay a subscription fee or purchase corporate access licenses (CALs) for Office in order to be given access to the online application suite (Microsoft already does this with email — the infamous Outlook Web Access). But wait — there's more! A Microsoft spokesperson told me that customers will need to buy a SharePoint server, which ranges from $4,400 plus CALs, or $41,000 with all CALs included, if they want to share documents created using the online version of Office 2010."

Comments

well duh

[goombah99]

you need the server to run the apps inhouse rather than out of your control. The same is true of things like google docs and other cloud apps. either you run it on their servers and gove third parties access to your data or you pay to run it on your servers. this is not a surprise or even unreasonable.

Re:well duh

[markdavis]

Yeah, it sounds like the article is confusing free, online, other-party-hosted applications with non-free, online, self-hosted applications. Both have existed for a long time.

Since Microsoft's main bread and butter is MS Office, why would they offer a "free" version- offline or online, other than trialware, crippleware, or sampleware?

Re:well duh

[Runaway1956]

Sorry, it is certainly unreasonable if 3rd parties have access to my data. Suppose that all in one afternoon, I do Grandma's tax return, do a medicare application for Aunt Helga, make a resume for my son, etc, etc, etc, you're saying that ALL of that data should be accessible by unknown 3rd parties? Every application hosted in the web should supply my data to anyone, and everyone, around the globe?

Totally unreasonable.

This is why I am not entirely thrilled about the web. Notice, I'm not just picking on Microsoft here - the same applies to Google and any other company that might supply applications in the future.

Re:well duh

[illumin8]

you need the server to run the apps inhouse rather than out of your control.

Some things should be mentioned here for those that aren't familiar with Sharepoint.

I work for a Fortune 15 company and we are required to use Sharepoint, instead of a simple file server, to store all of our Office documents already. Sharepoint is a terribly, terribly flawed "workplace collaboration" software. It's basically a glorified WebDAV server that supports versioning, and also allows people to post little "widgets" like calendars that integrate with Outlook.

Sharepoint is Microsoft's answer to Mediawiki and other real media sharing web services. In fact, for 99% of all companies, Mediawiki running on an internal server would be much better than Sharepoint, and provide much more functionality, without requiring a copy of MS Office to be installed on everyone's client PC. But, corporate america, in their infinite wisdom, only trusts Microsoft products, so we get stuck with Sharepoint.

I hate the fact that I'm required to use a Microsoft browser to check out a Microsoft proprietary document, and edit it with a Microsoft proprietary office software package, then check it back in to a Microsoft proprietary server. This solution is the most difficult to use, from a usability standpoint, workflow point of view solution I have ever used before. Mediawiki would be a better solution for 99% of these purposes. I like the ability to just click "Edit" and start editing a page. Microsoft's solution is to keep all editing inside the Office suite, which requires checkout and checkin of each individual document. It's a terrible solution, rooted in an outdated "document centric" methodology.

Re:well duh

[jonbryce]

Other than the access control functions, Sharepoint doesn't do any of these things either.

Re:well duh

[JoshuaDFranklin]

You don't understand what Sharepoint is, do you? We rolled out MOSS Sharepoint and used it for a few months. Even Windows users preferred email because the interface made it so painful to find things. Sharepoint does not have any of the functionality you list, either. There is an add-on that includes access control, but guess what? Client machines much be logged into the same domain (or have a a trust set up). In other words, Sharepoint has no access control functionality that can be used any differently than a Windows Server fileshare! It also stores documents in a database, and as you get a lot of documents (say, 1000) performance degrades. Maybe Mediawiki is a bad comparison since it has a completely different feature set, but any business would be better served with an actual document management system like Alfresco. (People also seem obsessed with Sharepoint's "blogs" which have much less functionality than Wordpress.)

Re:well duh

[popeyethesailor]

Well SharePoint doesn't do any of those things, and the Office integration part sucks. Have you seen system requirements for SharePoint for a large organization? Have you administered a non-trivial sized Sharepoint instance? Have you managed a SharePoint version to version migration? It's a PITA, and completely overkill for most applications. The OP was right, most people don't need SharePoint.

It's the new generation nightmare - almost like MS Access and Lotus Notes rolled into one - easy for some tasks, ridiculously painful for others. And don't get me started on the whole song & dance people go through to build custom applications on top of it...

Dunning-Kruger indeed.

Re:well duh

[jbeale53]

FYI, Sharepoint 2007 SP2 now supports Firefox with no config changes.

Re:A Bad Idea

[MightyYar]

Cloud computing is a bad idea.

Isn't that kind of a sweeping statement? Might it not be a good idea for some people?

It gives software companies an unprecedented level of control over our data.

It rather depends what you put on there and what kind of business you are, doesn't it? It also depends on your backup strategy. If they up the price of their service, you can migrate away. If they shut it off completely with no warning... well, you were keeping backups, right?

I would not endow them with this level of trust

Who's talking about trust? You use their service and you keep backups. You don't "trust" anyone.

If you are looking for an alternative, might I suggest http://www.openoffice.org/ [openoffice.org]

Please tell me that your whole post wasn't just a plug for a free office suite that everyone on Slashdot is already aware of?

Anyway, other than saving a few hundred bucks per seat, OpenOffice isn't a "solution". It still requires more support compared to letting Google/MS be your IT department.

Re:Move along...

[sam0737]

SharePoint (not 2010, i mean the current version) actually works well with Firefox. I have yet to noticed any different when browsing it with Firefox/IE7.

Source?

[jamesl]

And the source of this important information on pricing of an unreleased product?
A Microsoft spokesperson told me ...

Microsoft spokespersons with the knowledge and authority to speak about such things have a name and title.

Google charges too, for corporate Docs accounts

[themeparkphoto]

Google has paid services too with similar pricing models. While there is a free "Google for domains" that gives you docs, etc, on your domain, there are additional paid tiers of support.

Re:Move along...

[YrWrstNtmr]

SP works with Firefox at a basic level. Any of the higher level functionality (editing in place, slide libraries, checkout/in, etc.) needs IE, ActiveX, and Office.

The real name for SharePoint is Microsoft Office SharePoint Server. It's an online extension of the Office suite.

Details at Eleven

[thethibs]

Wow! Microsoft is selling its software! Be still my heart!

Glad to be off that treadmill

[HangingChad]

A Microsoft spokesperson told me that customers will need to buy a SharePoint server, which ranges from $4,400 plus CALs, or $41,000 with all CALs included, if they want to share documents created using the online version of Office 2010."

I am so happy to be working in an office free of the MS strangle hold. CALs always struck me as the most insidious of their macabre licensing circus. First you pay for the software, then you pay again so people can use it. What a racket. For the $41,000 you're paying in CALs I can cover an employee salary for 8 months (that would be one of the lower level people).

We don't have any problems getting our work done at the office without Microsoft. We have corporate Gmail and use GoogleDocs, so far with zero problems. If we have super sekret corporate information we can't trust to Google, we can store them in the truecrypt file container. We can send out pdf's to clients and customers, everyone can read them and they format just fine.

Plus I really like that we don't have to fit either our business processes or development processes to MSFT models. It's a lot more open and a lot more productive. You don't realize how much time you spend dancing on Microsoft's string until you get away from them. And, as an extra bonus, I can blow your ROI and TCO numbers out of the water. Just about any metric you want to use. And I never have to make the painful choice between layoffs and new servers. We can upgrade on our schedule, patch on our schedule, work the way we want to. If we need more capacity, we just stand it up. If we don't need it we can turn it off and it's not wasted money sitting there doing nothing.

And it's not just a small office. If you set it up right, you could do the same thing with almost any size organization. The only consistent pain in the rear problem we have regularly are those damn webinar programs. GoToMeeting and crap like that. Many of those are Windows only. That's kind of annoying.