Microsoft's Office 365 For Government Heralds New Google Fight

Nerval's Lobster writes "In a bid to expand the reach of its cloud services, Microsoft has introduced Office 365 for Government, which features the same cloud-based productivity tools as Office 365 but stores data in a segregated community cloud. Google and Microsoft have been locked in vicious battle over the past few years to score cloud contracts for government agencies. Microsoft hopes its support of standards such as ISO 27001, SAS70 Type II, HIPAA, FERPA, and FISMA will help to give it an edge in winning those contracts."

Comments

Re:I'm hoping for microsoft

[Dcnjoe60]

well, you're exactly right. if your word file is a grocery list, then it doesn't matter if its .txt, .docx, or whatever. But when your files start to get extraordinarily complex (hundred+ pages, tables, figs, headers, footnotes, track changes, comments), then translating from .docx to something else will be a mess and you might as well give up.

Maybe that's the strongest reason for them not to be in proprietary formats.

Re:I'm hoping for microsoft

[Anonymous Coward]

Part of the insidious nature of lock-in is that there is a tendency of some users to see it as its own form of 'normal', with the more open options being the source of the pain or expected pain incident to breaking out of the lock-in.

Have you never considered that Google Docs can be edited in place and thus don't have to be passed around, or constantly uploaded and downloaded? Or that if one really insists on using a local editor, the standard-compliant ones virtually remove the iterative formatting errors incident to this kind of portability?

Re:I'm hoping for microsoft

[ozmanjusri]

The nightmare wrt google docs is writing a doc in word, passing it to google docs for somebody's editing,

That's the nightmare for ANYONE trying to inter-operate with Microsoft.

And since it's the result of deliberate efforts by Microsoft to fight open standards, it should result in them being banned from government tenders.

http://www.adjb.net/post/Microsoft-Fails-the-Standards-Test.aspx
http://www.consortiuminfo.org/standardsblog/index.php?topic=20051116124417686
http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/2012/04/1how-microsoft-fought-true-open-standards-i/index.htm