Storing files on the internet, Microsoft style
Sunday, 7 October 2007
Steve Lohr
Microsoft is moving to deliver more software technology over the Internet as a service, forced to follow an industry trend led by Google, its newest archrival.
But its strategy is a careful balancing act, adding Internet services without offering online versions of its most lucrative desktop products like Word, Excel and PowerPoint.
Microsoft is making announcements today that it plans to offer a free service, called Office Live Workspace, that will allow people to store, access and share documents online. A user will be able store up to 1,000 documents on a workspace on the Web.
But a Word or Excel document in the online workspace can be edited only if the user has bought Microsoft's Word or Excel software. "The ideal case is where a person has Office," said Rajesh Jha, a vice president for Microsoft Office Live products.
In an offering for larger companies, Microsoft will host the data center software for e-mail, workgroup collaboration and instant messaging and provide those as online services to corporate customers with 5,000 or more users of Microsoft Office desktop software, a product second only to Windows as a profit maker for the software giant.
Microsoft has long had online services for consumers, including its Web-based e-mail, Hotmail, and instant messaging service known as Windows Live Messenger. Last year, the company introduced an online service for small businesses, providing them with their own Web sites and e-mail accounts. It also has a customer relationship management service, Microsoft Dynamics CRM, which competes with Salesforce.com, another leader in the software-as-services trend.
The moves by Microsoft, analysts say, represent an effort to quicken the company's pace in Internet services. "Microsoft is recognizing that it needs to be seen as a fast follower in this space, and now it is seen as a slow follower," said David M. Smith, an analyst at Gartner, a market research firm.
Microsoft describes its strategy as "software plus services." Increasingly, industry analysts say, software will be a blend of online and offline abilities. Google, for example, introduced programming tools called Google Gears in May to help people use its Web-based applications like e-mail and word processing when a user is, say, on an airplane.
Yet Microsoft champions a vision of Web-based services that is firmly moored in the company's mainstay products. Office Live Workspace, for example, can be used by anyone with a browser for tasks, ranging from a business team jointly drafting a sales proposal to a family sharing and updating a household calendar. (Individuals can sign up for a workspace at www.officelive.com, though the service will not begin until later this year.)
Microsoft has so far resisted the advice of some industry analysts and company insiders who say Microsoft should offer simple, online versions of its most popular desktop applications like Word and Excel. It would be better for Microsoft, they say, to offer those alternatives itself than to allow rivals to seize this emerging market.
Indeed, Google began offering its Google Apps to business customers this year. Today, hundreds of thousands of small businesses use the Google bundle of online applications that include a word processor, spreadsheet, e-mail, calendar and instant messaging, and dozens of large global corporations are evaluating Google Apps, said Dave Girouard, general manager of its corporate business.
"The world is changing to this new paradigm of Internet services, and it's going faster than people expected," he said.
Google won an endorsement last month when Capgemini, a large technology services company, began a service to help large companies use Google Apps. The corporate demand is fueled in part by the desire of companies to add Web-based collaboration tools quickly and without the expense and headaches of having to buy more server computers. The Google Apps run on Google's computers in its data centers.
.............
Internet
Microsoft is moving to deliver more software technology over the Internet as a service, forced to follow an industry trend led by Google, its newest archrival.
But its strategy is a careful balancing act, adding Internet services without offering online versions of its most lucrative desktop products like Word, Excel and PowerPoint.
Microsoft is making announcements today that it plans to offer a free service, called Office Live Workspace, that will allow people to store, access and share documents online. A user will be able store up to 1,000 documents on a workspace on the Web.
But a Word or Excel document in the online workspace can be edited only if the user has bought Microsoft's Word or Excel software. "The ideal case is where a person has Office," said Rajesh Jha, a vice president for Microsoft Office Live products.
In an offering for larger companies, Microsoft will host the data center software for e-mail, workgroup collaboration and instant messaging and provide those as online services to corporate customers with 5,000 or more users of Microsoft Office desktop software, a product second only to Windows as a profit maker for the software giant.
Microsoft has long had online services for consumers, including its Web-based e-mail, Hotmail, and instant messaging service known as Windows Live Messenger. Last year, the company introduced an online service for small businesses, providing them with their own Web sites and e-mail accounts. It also has a customer relationship management service, Microsoft Dynamics CRM, which competes with Salesforce.com, another leader in the software-as-services trend.
The moves by Microsoft, analysts say, represent an effort to quicken the company's pace in Internet services. "Microsoft is recognizing that it needs to be seen as a fast follower in this space, and now it is seen as a slow follower," said David M. Smith, an analyst at Gartner, a market research firm.
Microsoft describes its strategy as "software plus services." Increasingly, industry analysts say, software will be a blend of online and offline abilities. Google, for example, introduced programming tools called Google Gears in May to help people use its Web-based applications like e-mail and word processing when a user is, say, on an airplane.
Yet Microsoft champions a vision of Web-based services that is firmly moored in the company's mainstay products. Office Live Workspace, for example, can be used by anyone with a browser for tasks, ranging from a business team jointly drafting a sales proposal to a family sharing and updating a household calendar. (Individuals can sign up for a workspace at www.officelive.com, though the service will not begin until later this year.)
Microsoft has so far resisted the advice of some industry analysts and company insiders who say Microsoft should offer simple, online versions of its most popular desktop applications like Word and Excel. It would be better for Microsoft, they say, to offer those alternatives itself than to allow rivals to seize this emerging market.
Indeed, Google began offering its Google Apps to business customers this year. Today, hundreds of thousands of small businesses use the Google bundle of online applications that include a word processor, spreadsheet, e-mail, calendar and instant messaging, and dozens of large global corporations are evaluating Google Apps, said Dave Girouard, general manager of its corporate business.
"The world is changing to this new paradigm of Internet services, and it's going faster than people expected," he said.
Google won an endorsement last month when Capgemini, a large technology services company, began a service to help large companies use Google Apps. The corporate demand is fueled in part by the desire of companies to add Web-based collaboration tools quickly and without the expense and headaches of having to buy more server computers. The Google Apps run on Google's computers in its data centers.
.............
Internet