There’s a big story in today’s Wall Street Journal (paid registration required) about Web 2.0 alternatives to Microsoft Office.
WSJ.com – Is It Time to Dump Your Desktop?.
Still, some businesses say they’d be prepared to abandon Microsoft [Office] if and when the alternatives grow sophisticated enough. That’s the view at Interim HealthCare Inc., a home health-care provider with tens of thousands of PCs spread across the U.S. Satish Movva, Interim’s chief information officer, says his company has tested many Office alternatives over the years but has yet to find a solid replacement. The alternatives still can’t handle documents created in Office well enough for his needs and aren’t as "polished" as Office, he says.
But moving from Office to a cheaper alternative remains a goal. "Realistically, we want that day to come," Mr. Movva says. If another program can let Interim open a huge Excel spreadsheet without a hitch, "I think I can make a business case for moving to it," Mr. Movva says.
(The boldface is mine.) Looking at this as both a developer and a product manager, I’m spending a lot of time thinking about what Microsoft Office customers are actually looking for when they say they want an alternative to Office. (I’m going to assume that they don’t want more features.) Do they want something that’s free of charge? (If free of charge is such a big deal, what’s wrong with OpenOffice?) Do they want something that uniquely leverages the capabilities of the Web in some fashion? Maybe users want to be able to save all their data "into the cloud" so that they (and, potentially, their co-workers) can seamlessly access their documents from any browser in the world? Is real-time collaboration in the browser what people want?
I don’t look at the promise of real-time collaboration in the browser as a benefit of these kinds of applications — in fact, I look at it as a drawback. (To understand why this is true, ask yourself how many meetings and telephone calls have been supplanted by email conversations. If your answer is "more than two" then you understand the value of not being forced to collaborate in real time.)
The current reasoning behind tools like Writely, Zoho and Google Spreadsheet seems to be that users are really hot for a rich in-browser editing experience, which seems reasonable, sorta. But the apps we’re seeing today seem to say "behold! I bring you an in-browser version of Word for Windows 2.0 circa 1991. Bow down and worship me, losers!"
This seems kinda wrong to me. Do we really find ourselves in front of a computer without a rich editor installed on it (either Word, OpenOffice, Wordpad, or what have you) that often? Is the ability to get access to your documents from any machine in the world so critical that people are clamoring to switch to a substandard in-browser editor as a tradeoff? I dunno.
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When working in the SMB market place, cost is something our customers cite as their biggest complaint with Microsoft Office. At the same time, it’s often just that – a complaint. We present the alternatives – different Microsoft Office Suites (Office Basic, Small Business, Pro, etc), the competitors – OpenOffice, etc… in almost every case they purhcase some flavor of Microsoft Office.
As far as hosted office-applications go, I check them out from time to time. In fact, Google spreadsheets came in handy once because the machine I was at didn’t have a spreadsheet app on it. When I got back home, I put it in Excel to work with further.
Pushing stuff up into the cloud certainly adds some value – perhaps Sharepoint/WSS 2007 will help get us here.
And no – I’ve never found myself in front of a computer lacking a rich text editor.
Speaking as a user, I want to be able to save my documents “on the net” and access them anywhere. Quickly. Writely and Google Spreadsheets do this well.
But you’re right that they’re substandard applications. And I don’t find myself using them very often.
I use Window’s built-in WebDAV to store my Office files on a remote server sometimes, but it slows Office down, and also to my surprise there still aren’t very many commercial WebDAV services out there.
Again, speaking as a user, I don’t ultimately care whether my application is a rich client like Office, or something I access through the browser. What I do want is a full-featured application that gives me quick access to my files on any computer I choose to use. Nobody– not Microsoft, not Google, not Yahoo, not OpenOffice– is giving me this yet.
And no, it doesn’t need to be free, although I think a subscription-based model for these kinds of applications will be a tough sell, at least for anyone other than Microsoft.
I didn’t intend that as a personal comment–
I’ll pay anyone who can deliver the product I’m looking for.
But I think for the wider marketplace, subscription-based office software is going to be a tough sell. I was thinking Microsoft might be able to transition their customer base from the per-PC license model to the per-user subscription model, given that the marketplace is already used to paying Microsoft for office software.
I’ve never been able to get Office Live to work. (I just tried again, and– still nope!) I realize it’s a beta product, but right now it’s way below the functionality level of Google’s products, since they actually work.
So Microsoft will, in fact, sell you this on a subscription basis today, it’s called Microsoft Office Live (officelive.microsoft.com).
I’m curious, why would you be willing to pay Microsoft and not others? Would be be worried that a smaller company would wink out of existence and take your data with it?
The existing set of office applications out there are in very early stages and are trying to get the basics right and they dont use the power of the web yet. Its probably not fair to compare them to their desktop counterparts yet. The real power comes in when these applications open up (APIs). We will see a good set of mashups that’ll emerge with other web apps.
Dont you hate when you have to open the beast – MS Word/Excel to open a word attachment in your webmail? If the same attachment is opened as another tab in the browser window in fraction of a second, that is convenience. Web based applications will turn into convenience with some integration with other web apps. There is long road ahead.
Raju
Zoho
Actually, mail is an interesting example. Many people have clearly decided that the better webmail clients are acceptable. Personally, I still prefer a desktop client for mail– I use Thunderbird, which I’ve installed on pretty much every computer I use, and I use Outlook at work.
It would be interesting to see something at the OS level (obviously this would need to be implemented seperately in each major OS) which could register web apps as handlers for document types. So if I click on a .doc file, it will open it in my default word processor– which might be Word, or Zoho, or Writely.
The fact that Zoho and Writely can’t be equal citizens with Word at the OS level is an impediment to adoption.
David,
Adam Pash at lifehacker has come up with something which you may like
http://lifehacker.com/software/web-as-desktop/hack-attack-desktopintegrated-internet-office-188199.php
Note that instead of ajaxwrite/xls, you can very well use Zoho or Writely.
Thanks,
Arvind
I think there’s a bit of a flawed assumption in your article, namely that anything that isn’t Microsoft Word or Office is substandard. The reality is that most of the time, we don’t need or want what Office supplies, and yet we pay for it anyway, if not in dollars, then in disk space, speed, and just sheer complexity.
I already do 90% of my writing without Word, and in fact, I always feel a little annoyed having to fire up Word for a client or another who requires it. It’s slow, it does countless things I don’t want it to do (like connect to my printer when it is exiting — why does it do that?), and eats CPU and memory like it is going out of style. Yet all I want it to do is to read and write word processor files. I don’t need a $300 software package to do that, and I certainly don’t want to pay a subscription to do so. It’s kind of like taking an SUV to the grocery store — it works, but it is hauling around a lot of useless weight to get there.
David Pogue notes the software paradox, namely that if you upgrade software enough, you eventually ruin it. Word passed that point long ago. Only Microsoft’s proprietary and closed document formats stand in the way of its replacement by other more fleet of foot solutions that actually care about what users really want instead of what suits Microsoft’s business model.
If you want a more detailed description of how Microsoft is squandering its business, I posted an article yesterday to this effect. You can read it at:
http://www.blackfriarsinc.com/blog/2006/07/attack-of-unstoppable-toys-and-why.html
I think it’s a control issue. Businesses don’t like paying a Microsoft tax every time they hire a new employee, and they sweat over licensing compliance. Both issues seem beyond their control today but they’re actively seeking out alternatives.
Perceived value is a big problem for Microsoft with Office. It’s clearly valuable enough for most businesses to buy today, but they’re left with a sour taste in their mouth after each purchase.
IT departments would prefer to provide positive ROI business solutions rather than more bills from Microsoft at management meetings.
Is this reaching a tipping point? Perhaps, but businesses are slooow to change, so we’ll keep buying for now.
I never said that anything that isn’t Office is substandard. (I do 90% of my text editing in TextPad on Windows and TextMate on the Mac.)
I have a hard time buying the notion that I should just wait for the existing crop of in-browser rich editors to get better at leveraging the web. Why shouldn’t I give Office (or OpenOffice, or even TextPad) the same benefit of the doubt?
Thanks to everyone who’s commented on this, this conversation is really interesting and helpful.
Not sure what you mean about businesses resenting the “Microsoft tax,” Ed. If it’s true that businesses really don’t want to pay that tax, why do they continue to pay it? There are certainly “good enough” alternatives that are free or cheaper (both inside and outside the browser) and there have been for years.
For that matter, why don’t businesses object to paying a desk tax or a telephone tax when they hire someone new?
I think the Microsoft tax is a red herring. Office Applications are going to cost businesses money one way or another, whether that’s in the form of licensing, subscriptions, support, or in-house tech.
I can imagine ad-supported applications for consumers and possibly small businesses, but I can’t imagine them being tolerated by large enterprises.
And hopefully we all agree that somebody is eventually going to get this right. Some company is going to come up with the right mix of ubiquity, desktop integration, feature set, quick internet access to documents, local access to documents, and user interface.
I’m sure Microsoft is trying to get there, but I can also understand why some people are betting on other players.
We’re getting closer and closer by the day. Our company, Sapotek, has created a webtop that incorporates the OpenOffice suite into a desktop interface that includes webmail, IM, Hard Drive, Address Book, MP3 player, blog creator and many other apps that are no longer native to the PC, all within one browser window (Flash GUI). Have we found the “mix of ubiquity, desktop integration, feature set, quick internt access” to which you refer?
Well, our first desktop, which was in Spanish (http://computadora.de) and launched nearly 2.5 years ago, generated thousands of users from around the world who seem to think so and we’re just now launching a public beta of an enhanced English version, Destktoptwo.
I encourage you to check it out and decide for yourselves. There’s still some work to be done (it’s only version 0.7b), but we think it comes closer than anything we know of to finding that “mix.”
http://desktoptwo.com
I’m in charge of tech development at Sapotek (see above posting by Joshua Rand) and I must say that even though some of the on-line Office offerings out there are impressive in many ways, they’re still in their foetus stage when compared to their adult conterparts, MSFT’s and OO.org’s.
We give our users OO.org through VNC and the formula works very well for viewing and light editing of Office docs, even in shared sessions à la Webex.
On the other hand, transaction-based software can completely be deleted from the desktop and put out there on the Web. Our offering replicates all the functionality of desktop apps which people know and love, like multi-window operation, keyboard shortcuts, expandable windows, dragable items, etc. We believe there’s no tradeoff for the user between our email app and a local MUA like Thunderbird.
Lastly, our user’s hard disk partitions are Webdav-enabled. We encourage our users to use a hybrid desktop-Web environment where most of their applications, like email, IM, calendar, contacts directory and other basic apps reside on the Web, while they still use their desktop OS for Office and other more sophisticated apps which can access remote storage in the same manner they use local disks through Webdav.
In conclusion, at this time you can gradually start moving your entire digital life to the Web. You would keep on your desktop what’s not very mature as a Web app while you’d move your data and basic apps onto the Web. With a local-remote desktop and all your information available everywhere you can start enjoying the best of what both worlds can offer today.
DesktopTwo is interesting, but I have trouble seeing it as a long-term solution.
Does anyone know of a personal finance web app which is a serious competitor to Quicken/Money? And by “serious competitor” I mean it should be able to download transactions from banks which support this. It would kind of amaze me if nobody has done this yet. (It amazed me two years ago when I researched it).
Businesses have been slow to move to Microsoft alternatives, but there seems to be a lot of pent up energy waiting for the perfect alternative. Sure, things exist today, but either haven’t met the needs of organizations, or haven’t lit a fire under IT departments.
Businesses are addressing desk and telephone taxes. Shared work spaces are becoming common in large accounting firms. Real estate companies rarely have office space for all their agents. Virtual PBX and VoIP systems are being adopted by businesses as alternatives to traditional phone systems.