Posted on 07/13/2009 9:37:36 AM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach
Office is a dependable cash cow that Microsoft is leaning on as it increasingly shifts toward a business model partly based on the Internet. The company said at its Worldwide Partner Conference in New Orleans that "tens of thousands" of people will now be able to start testing the new version of the software, called Office 2010, as well as related, Internet-based Office Web applications.
The shift for some elements of Office to a Web-based format has long been anticipated, but it's nonetheless a significant move for a key product that typically comes pre-installed on a PC, or purchased as a shrink-wrapped disk.
For the quarter ended in March, Microsoft reported that the business division that includes Office contributed $4.5 billion of the company's total $13.6 billion revenue in the period - more than any other single unit.
(Excerpt) Read more at marketwatch.com ...
This is a typical MS move. Announce vaporware in an attempt to undermine another emerging standard.
Right up there when they pushed to make “portable Word” files a replacement for PDF.
Or when they announced their “open docuements format” to replace the already established ODF standard (and confuse people over what ODF was.) Strange enough, Microsofts ODF standard wasn’t only compatible with MS Office.
I just installed OpenOffice on two PC’s I recently bought.
So far, so good, and it was free.
To me, I’d think this was a pretty credible threat to MS, but . . .
Only thing it doesn’t come with is Outlook (or some Outlook variant).
IBM to give OpenOffice the Outlook e-mail killer it needs?
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September 10th, 2007
IBM has finally taken the big leap to support rival Sun’s OpenOffice.org project, a move that could have significant impact on the adoption of the open source Office suite.
As part of that commitment, announced Monday, IBM released its first code contributions from Lotus Notes such as accessibility enhancements. But more important, the Armonk, NY company, a longtime Linux supporter that competes aggressively against Sun in the server business, hinted that other “rich features” from the leading e-mail and groupware program could find its way into the OpenOffice code base.
Has the Outlook killer for OpenOffice finally arrived?
OpenOffice is the most promising open source alternative to Microsoft Office that runs on most Linux distributions, Windows, Macintosh and BSD but to date it has lacked an integrated e-mail service such as the Outlook client that is integrated in Microsoft Office.
It remains unclear how much of Lotus Notes will end up in OpenOffice. Still, any integration of key Notes features would give the Office suite — and the ISO approved OpenDocument Format (ODF) — a big shot in the arm. Notes is the No. 2 e-mail and groupware solution in the market that rivals Microsoft’s Outlook/Exchange platform for enterprises. Microsoft has proposed its own Office Open XML as an ISO standard but it failed to muster enough votes for approval in a recent ISO vote.
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Maybe that didn't really do it?
Lotus notes is bad news. Many clients have it, many wished they didn’t.
For those with lots of offices in China/India/Indonesia, it’s a must-have though, because you can schedule synch.
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