Comments on: Open Season On Microsoft Office

By: Free For All… Office Sweepstakes « GigaOM

Free For All… Office Sweepstakes « GigaOM — Mon, 01 Oct 2007 06:32:39 +0000

[...] by Om Malik Sunday, September 30, 2007 at 11:31 PM PT | No comments Everyone wants a piece of Microsoft’s (MSFT) Office suite. Google (GOOG), Sun Microsystems (JAVA), IBM, dozens of [...]

By: Diary of a Rat

Diary of a Rat — Sun, 23 Sep 2007 22:22:49 +0000

Google and IBM: The Office is Closed

Last week saw announcements from Google and IBM about office productivity app launches that, according to the tech punditocracy at least, promises serious threats to Microsoft’s lucrative hegemony on the enterprise desktop. Of course, one would...

By: BARZIN DARAGAHI

BARZIN DARAGAHI — Fri, 14 Sep 2007 19:14:47 +0000

For future reference, Capgemini is not spelled Cap Gemini. :)

By: Is It A Steal Or Did They Blink? « GigaOM

Is It A Steal Or Did They Blink? « GigaOM — Thu, 13 Sep 2007 04:06:45 +0000

[...] cuts as well? If that happens, then it could put Microsoft’s cash cow on a crash diet, giving Office wannabes a chance to [...]

By: Om Malik

Om Malik — Thu, 13 Sep 2007 03:52:51 +0000

Bloj,

thanks for your nice summation. Appreciate it.

By: aja

aja — Wed, 12 Sep 2007 14:43:01 +0000

great article.

By: bloj

bloj — Wed, 12 Sep 2007 07:03:39 +0000

Yes jcodezz is right that Microsoft is the only Big boy in the corporate IT (on the desktop and lightweight server side that is)..but let me share something. I have been an IT (focused on Infrastructure) consultant for last 12 years and this year was the first year when I was asked to evaluate Zimbra email software and do a side by side comparision against Exchange 2007.And Zimbra was damn impressive - however their sales and service organization wasnt - so the client ultimately decided that they will go for a exchange upgrade. However I am sure that next time an upgrade is around the corner for exchange - if Zimbra or some other alternative email Service can prove their worth - they have a bloody good chance of replacing exchange (just like once upon time exchange replaces sendmail/imap/pop unix servers).Same thing with office software too. I see corporates experimenting more and more with open source software because their qualities are improving , the business model around them is improving and overall they are catching up with Microsoft. Agreed it will take time but nothing lasts forever (at least not in this world) and there may be a time when Microsoft will find its worthy replacement. The signs are increasing NOT decreasing my friends.

By: Scott Colesworthy

Scott Colesworthy — Wed, 12 Sep 2007 02:32:30 +0000

Has anyone done a detailed comparison between Microsoft Office and the current version of Premium Google Apps yet?

What options does one have when using Google Apps when not connected to the net?

How is Google addressing compatibility with office? (The need to convert a Google document to an office document since most people now use office.)

By: Opinions Vary on CapGemini : Venture Chronicles

Opinions Vary on CapGemini : Venture Chronicles — Tue, 11 Sep 2007 23:26:20 +0000

[...] that is a significant portion of the market really wants Google to be successful with office apps in order to provide a lever to use against Microsoft. Whether or not Google is successful is [...]

By: Brandon Wirtz

Brandon Wirtz — Tue, 11 Sep 2007 22:13:17 +0000

This is just the first volley in the upcoming Software as a service wars. SAS is coming, and google, and Microsoft are the big two in this space. hotmail vs gmail, live.com vs. Google Search, these are small potatoes compared to the office automation as a Web App.

By: Zoltan Soos

Zoltan Soos — Tue, 11 Sep 2007 21:37:43 +0000

MS Office will be a specialty application on the high end and the mainstream will be left for the rest. Where is this rule? 80/20? or 90/10?

By: Jesse Kopelman

Jesse Kopelman — Tue, 11 Sep 2007 21:20:24 +0000

I think the elephant in the room is Oracle. In my corporate world experience, all the information being manipulated in those fancy Excel spreadsheets comes out of an Oracle database. If they were to embrace Open Office, that would really be a big deal.

By: Om Malik

Om Malik — Tue, 11 Sep 2007 21:19:34 +0000

JCCodez

you are being critical, but not sharing us your insights.

it be great if you can outline how you see the situation is at present, and why they are going to fail. It be of immense help to everyone. I for one would welcome your lesson!

By: jccodez

jccodez — Tue, 11 Sep 2007 19:17:00 +0000

“Zoho and Open Office and soon Google Analytics are providing a via solution to an Excel spreadsheet ”
Have an engineer use these solutions and watch them laugh in your face. Have you ever seen what an engineer or financial analyst does with spread sheets, how they pull data from oracle, sqlserver, flat files ect…? I wish you would struggle to provide an engineer a solution related to subsurface drilling analysis…You can’t do it.

By: jccodez

jccodez — Tue, 11 Sep 2007 19:13:02 +0000

Had to use microsoft office? Om, I still think your comments are mis-placed. How long ago did you work at Time Warner? Do you think things have changed since then. I will tell you what has changed, access to corporate information…building out infrastructure to organize and access information. Microsoft is making leaps and bounds in this area, far beyond what google or openoffice.org have. You seem to be looking at this as a very simplistic model from an I.T. perspective. I suggest you brush up on the latest in I.T. technology find some people that are actually in the trenches and have valid input related to your title. Your article is great for quick hit headlines, but when it comes to depth and analysis of current available technology, both from microsoft, ibm, or googol, you fall dreadfully short.

By: Om Malik

Om Malik — Tue, 11 Sep 2007 15:02:16 +0000

JCCodez

to your second comment, I think you are onto something - Office + Live Services + Communications : that is an interesting combination and that is why I think most Office 2.0 start-ups are going to get screwed.

Google is also plotting along the same lines, and like Microsoft is thinking about "collaboration and communication" as the focus.