Microsoft gave the world a peak at Office 13 today. You can create your Office 365 account here to preview Office 13.
Touch, cloud, social, mobile ... I think those were the key areas the folks from Redmond wanted to hit.
A couple of general thoughts I had during the presentation.
- Windows is the center of Microsoft's universe
- Cloud at Microsoft primarily means syncing ... I don't think a single portion of the demo ran on the web
- Mobile at Microsoft means Windows ... Windows is mobile. Mobile is a feature
- Social means SharePoint ... SharePoint is social. Social is also a feature
Ballmer says, "Office 365 is a service, we're offering Office 13 as a service" and yet you download software and it currently only runs on Windows 7. Mac, XP, Vista are not supported. Microsoft looks at every device as a device that should be running Windows 8 - the desktop OS still defines Microsoft. Microsoft's biggest strength for 32 years is also its biggest threat. Today the client OS is a commodity. I've seen Window 7 to Windows 8 upgrades for less than $15. Can an organization with 100,000 employees thrive based on an operating system and good spreadsheet software?
Microsoft's "cloud" has a lot in common with Apple's "cloud" in that it mostly provides syncing across devices. Certainly this is a handy feature but to state "the cloud" is at the center of Office 13 is completely wrong. Windows 7 or 8 is at the center of Office 13. A client or server operating system is not at the core of a cloud computing service (from the perspective of the customer). Salesforce.com, Box.com, Google Apps etc. run on the web. Consumer cloud computing apps like Amazon, Google.com, Facebook, and Linkedin are not dependent on the local OS either - they're served via your favorite browser. They are services, not products. Office 13 is a software product.
Microsoft is cloud washing Office 13. I'm still waiting for them to coin the term, "personal private-cloud" ... aka Windows. Besides not being very cloudy, Office 13 also holds true to its personal productivity roots. "Watch what I can do" Microsoft said over and over again in the demo. Screen sharing is useful but true collaboration goes much farther. Check out this Google Docs demo with a few friends or coworkers and you'll see what I mean. To be honest, I'm tired of meetings where people spit out a bunch of ideas and one person ends up doing a majority of the work. Google Docs flips this workflow on its head. Group tasks that used to take a week, can now be completed in an hour, or even better, just occur in real-time.
Will Office 13 be successful? Probably. It is transformative technology for an organization? No. Is it cloud-centric? No. Is it touch? Sort of. Is it "social"? No, you need SharePoint and Lync (aka an Enterprise Agreement) for that and "social" means intra-domain*. Is it mobile? If you consider Windows 7 mobile.
* "SharePoint can be inter-domain." Yes, but it requires heavy investment from the IT team which creates a cost in dollars and time. If it's done at all, it's very limited and extremely rigid. Contrast this to Salesforce.com or Google Sites/Docs which require zero IT intervention to share in the real world.
Microsoft's "cloud" has a lot in common with Apple's "cloud" in that it mostly provides syncing across devices. Certainly this is a handy feature but to state "the cloud" is at the center of Office 13 is completely wrong. Windows 7 or 8 is at the center of Office 13. A client or server operating system is not at the core of a cloud computing service (from the perspective of the customer). Salesforce.com, Box.com, Google Apps etc. run on the web. Consumer cloud computing apps like Amazon, Google.com, Facebook, and Linkedin are not dependent on the local OS either - they're served via your favorite browser. They are services, not products. Office 13 is a software product.
Microsoft is cloud washing Office 13. I'm still waiting for them to coin the term, "personal private-cloud" ... aka Windows. Besides not being very cloudy, Office 13 also holds true to its personal productivity roots. "Watch what I can do" Microsoft said over and over again in the demo. Screen sharing is useful but true collaboration goes much farther. Check out this Google Docs demo with a few friends or coworkers and you'll see what I mean. To be honest, I'm tired of meetings where people spit out a bunch of ideas and one person ends up doing a majority of the work. Google Docs flips this workflow on its head. Group tasks that used to take a week, can now be completed in an hour, or even better, just occur in real-time.
Will Office 13 be successful? Probably. It is transformative technology for an organization? No. Is it cloud-centric? No. Is it touch? Sort of. Is it "social"? No, you need SharePoint and Lync (aka an Enterprise Agreement) for that and "social" means intra-domain*. Is it mobile? If you consider Windows 7 mobile.
* "SharePoint can be inter-domain." Yes, but it requires heavy investment from the IT team which creates a cost in dollars and time. If it's done at all, it's very limited and extremely rigid. Contrast this to Salesforce.com or Google Sites/Docs which require zero IT intervention to share in the real world.
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