Every now and then, I wibble on about technology: it's what I've done for a living for the last 20 years in some way or other and I can get excited about it in a fashion that many would find disturbing, in a 'Stop fiddling around in your trouser pockets!' kind of way. In recent years, most of the excitement has come from some edge opportunity becoming a reality, generally as a result of some company turning up on the scene - or repositioning its offerings - in a way that has the potential to radically redefine the way we live or work. Think Apple, Google, Dropbox, Evernote... all of which I've penned something hyperbolic about in the past. But think also the mass of niche players, the developers of narrow cloud applications and tablet apps who come and go and just occasionally turn into a new behemoth - a Spotify or Betfair or Skype.
But don't think Microsoft. If there's been a constant presence in the background of my career in and around IT it's been Microsoft. The Microsoft who used to own the Desktop in every house and every company. The Microsoft who dominated the productivity - Office - software market. The Microsoft who could set pretty much whatever price they wanted for what they did because no-one else could credibly challenge it. Comfortable, turgid old Microsoft who were caught napping when Apple stole the music market. And then the tablet market that Microsoft had failed to get right. The Smartphone market that MS had a real headstart on... but fell asleep over at just the wrong moment. Microsoft who watched Google develop services in the cloud - GMail, Google Docs, Picasa, Search... and made miserable copycat attempts at the same, too little, too late. Microsoft who have been running to catch up with the whole cloud thing for the last 5 years, whilst Amazon, Dropbox, Box, Google leached our data into the sky and began to persuade the companies that we work for that the whole data - and services and infrastructure - in the sky thing might be a bit of a corporate imperative. Microsoft who looked on aghast as the world decided that the desktop computer wasn't the be-all and end-all of existence, the mobile device was the new Pope and blooming heck we have nothing to offer in that market unless we embark on a big and expensive catch-up exercise which everyone will sneer at because we are already history. Sad old Microsoft who cling onto their office apps, attempt to challenge the Unified Comms market (with increasing success, to be fair - Cisco and Avaya are running scared), fret about the absence of a social and collaborative offering in an 'I wish I had more friends' way and look less visionary than me, sitting in my kitchen, banging out musings on this crappy Dell laptop. Poor old Microsoft, led by their resident crazed loony. Microsoft, once kings of all they surveyed, now best recognised in the average household as the maker of a fine videogames console. They're dead in the water.
Except... I think they may not be. Because, the thing is... 99% of people who read this won't have a clue about what I'm talking about. The incremental leaps and occasional bound in the sectors that Gartner like to call The Nexus of Forces are of no interest to most people. They want computing in their houses that makes life easy. They want it on all the devices they carry about, want it secure and safe and backed up and functional. Above all, they don't want to have to think about it. They certainly don't need to follow the incremental developments in cloud storage and cloud applications and voice and video and blah blah blah. The minutiae of technology are for eggheads and gadget pervs. People like me. (Obviously, mostly the former).
So, what has Microsoft done? They've caught up with a very big chunk of all this, all at once. A tablet device that runs a desktop OS as well as a tablet OS (Jury out on that until the hardware is proven, but it's very appealing). A desktop OS that can do touch as well - and I like it enough to have installed it across my house, for no better reason than that it works a bit better than the last one as a desktop OS and seemed a natural thing to do if I wanted to really get to grips with what was coming next. But... critically... a new version of their Office suite that rethinks the offering completely. Everyone will know the old Office apps - because everyone uses them at work - that cost a fortune if you actually dared to consider having them at home, legally. No more.
But don't think Microsoft. If there's been a constant presence in the background of my career in and around IT it's been Microsoft. The Microsoft who used to own the Desktop in every house and every company. The Microsoft who dominated the productivity - Office - software market. The Microsoft who could set pretty much whatever price they wanted for what they did because no-one else could credibly challenge it. Comfortable, turgid old Microsoft who were caught napping when Apple stole the music market. And then the tablet market that Microsoft had failed to get right. The Smartphone market that MS had a real headstart on... but fell asleep over at just the wrong moment. Microsoft who watched Google develop services in the cloud - GMail, Google Docs, Picasa, Search... and made miserable copycat attempts at the same, too little, too late. Microsoft who have been running to catch up with the whole cloud thing for the last 5 years, whilst Amazon, Dropbox, Box, Google leached our data into the sky and began to persuade the companies that we work for that the whole data - and services and infrastructure - in the sky thing might be a bit of a corporate imperative. Microsoft who looked on aghast as the world decided that the desktop computer wasn't the be-all and end-all of existence, the mobile device was the new Pope and blooming heck we have nothing to offer in that market unless we embark on a big and expensive catch-up exercise which everyone will sneer at because we are already history. Sad old Microsoft who cling onto their office apps, attempt to challenge the Unified Comms market (with increasing success, to be fair - Cisco and Avaya are running scared), fret about the absence of a social and collaborative offering in an 'I wish I had more friends' way and look less visionary than me, sitting in my kitchen, banging out musings on this crappy Dell laptop. Poor old Microsoft, led by their resident crazed loony. Microsoft, once kings of all they surveyed, now best recognised in the average household as the maker of a fine videogames console. They're dead in the water.
Except... I think they may not be. Because, the thing is... 99% of people who read this won't have a clue about what I'm talking about. The incremental leaps and occasional bound in the sectors that Gartner like to call The Nexus of Forces are of no interest to most people. They want computing in their houses that makes life easy. They want it on all the devices they carry about, want it secure and safe and backed up and functional. Above all, they don't want to have to think about it. They certainly don't need to follow the incremental developments in cloud storage and cloud applications and voice and video and blah blah blah. The minutiae of technology are for eggheads and gadget pervs. People like me. (Obviously, mostly the former).
So, what has Microsoft done? They've caught up with a very big chunk of all this, all at once. A tablet device that runs a desktop OS as well as a tablet OS (Jury out on that until the hardware is proven, but it's very appealing). A desktop OS that can do touch as well - and I like it enough to have installed it across my house, for no better reason than that it works a bit better than the last one as a desktop OS and seemed a natural thing to do if I wanted to really get to grips with what was coming next. But... critically... a new version of their Office suite that rethinks the offering completely. Everyone will know the old Office apps - because everyone uses them at work - that cost a fortune if you actually dared to consider having them at home, legally. No more.
Office 365 is now a subscription offering. Less than £80 a year and you can put the very latest - and generally rather beautiful - version on five devices in your household. Including Access, OneNote and Publisher. It comes with 20GB of Skydrive cloud storage a la Dropbox. Edit your documents in the cloud from any machine - you can download the appropriate office app temporarily while you work. An hour of free phone calls every month, to anywhere, with Skype (which MS bought a year ago). Apps with 20 years of development behind them that make Google's offerings look puny. I could write reams about why this is important, but the bottom-line is clear. For someone like me, with a house full of saucepans and computers, it's a compelling proposition. I'll keep some stuff on the margins - GMail and Hangouts in particular - but I am signing up and moving my house back into Microsoft's world for the time being. The integration with the base OS, the functionality, the simplicity of the proposition - it's just too compelling. What's really significant about this is that it doesn't require anyone to understand the small details, the incremental changes, the challenges of integrating your personal life across a range of services. This is it, out of the box, courtesy stodgy old Microsoft. Sure, it's not perfect - the absence of iOS 365 apps is a big hole, the collaboration capability is a bit limited, the mail offering is not going to make me reject GMail... but it's big enough, coherent enough, slick enough to reposition Microsoft's slice of the consumer and enterprise market in a fundamental way.
Why do I think this is interesting enough to write about? Well, because I think it might just kick against the normal course of a technology company's life cycle: Big or small, long-lived or flash in the pan, technology companies generally rise... and then fall. An Apple occasionally does the phoenix thing, but it's not common. Up... then down is the natural order. What Microsoft are currently doing might well be the start of a scrabble out of the pit of technology has-beens. And it may well touch us all.
You can go try out the new office for free, for a month. It's absolutely worth a look.
You can go try out the new office for free, for a month. It's absolutely worth a look.
RSS Feed
