In many complex tasks, Excel is a front end to a complex business process. That business process is kicked off by some VBA code that talks to some COM object that talks to the back-end infrastructure. For example, in Finance, there are scenarios where that COM object kicks off a job on a Linux HPC cluster to compute, for example, the risk of a position that a trader is interested in. While "Office Substitute X" could potentially do the same thing, the trader has absolutely zero interest in using anything other than Excel, and he/she is the rainmaker.
So there is very little cannibalization of the existing desktop Office business for Enterprise customers. What this seems to be doing is taking people's familiarity with Office at work, and making it cheaper/easier for them to continue to experience Office in their personal lives.
Office and Windows have a symbiotic relationship, and most of Microsoft's other products hang off of these two. Losing Office or Windows could prove disastrous for Microsoft.
Lately Google Docs and Pages have filled those spots, but I suspect this giveaway is just shoring up or buffering their stronghold in the workplace.
Strongly agreed on the symbiotic relationship. I actually bought a full version of Win7 and VMWare Fusion just to run the "real" Office apps on my Mac. (Tellingly, the actual Office Suite was only $10, through the Home Use Program)
* EDIT: Changed "I don't think Microsoft has ever..."
What?
Having encountered an issue before (The workbook you are trying to open is an ISO Strict file), it's not clear if Microsoft actually leveraged the existing Office code in the mobile versions: https://support.microsoft.com/kb/2960660
VBA sucks, but come on, there are worse jobs out there.
Having that job put all my programming jobs in perspective. To preserve that I have a picture of a dude in a coal mine by my phone at work. Any time I'm asked to submit a pointless form, I think of that guy. I don't do this to shame myself but rather to put my work problems into perspective which helps me.
Carpel tunnel, ocular cancer, and brain damage.
Come on.
The worst was maintaining a Hotel front office guest system written in GW-Basic
This isn't a total give away, this is a loss leader which is just selling an editing front end for the files, not anything like the power of the full product.
However, I really think that Office on the desktop is a turd but it does make automation pretty easy but slightly awkward and painful. Perhaps this is bitterness from converting VSTO and Word interop to late binding all morning but I'm not a fan.
This is "meh" even to someone as embedded into the ecosystem like myself.
I'd rather give up on Office entirely, but its relative ubiquity plus free apps mean I'll let the camel stick its nose back under my tent.
It's surprisingly common. Even my wife who is a complete luddite has a couple of scripts for excel she copied off a web site to do a tax calculation.
Now, it's post-PC. This is opening up Office to a whole new generation of users who have found their home in tablets.
While it is a solid move for Microsoft, that whole generation of new users wont see much of a difference between 2014 office for ipad and numbers.
I bought my wife a Chromebook as a stopgap when her last Windows laptop died, and although she still has to use Windows for work, she now swears by Drive for working on shared documents.
It can't overcome the "I need MS Office" problem, and it might not be feature equivalent for layout, but for 90% of stuff that is just some text, it should be fine.
(Found by clicking through several links of the article and removing the SessionID in their link.)
[1] NSA partner
[2] You
;)
Wow, I know it was high, I never realized it was that high, I'm guessing that includes Exchange and administration app costs.
Source: http://news.microsoft.com/bythenumbers/ms_numbers.pdf
Mac versions of Office have been available for decades. In fact, the first version of Office was actually released for the Macintosh and not for Windows
To the extent that you perceive the Surface advertised as iPad++, you're probably thinking more of the original Surface ads one to two years ago (which focused on the regular Surface, which did in fact ship with a free copy of Office).
MS Office on desktop won't work on mobile devices without re-thinking the interface and UX.
Smart, considering its the better product and you still have the option to download an actual program.
This is bad news for independent developers and established software houses alike.
http://blogs.technet.com/b/dataplatforminsider/archive/2014/...
Let us see what sticky features MS brings. So that in the longer run a user gets caught in smooth integration of Mobile and Notebook version of Office.
But there are fewer hopes now. Too late.
Satya Nadella (Microsoft's CEO) understands that you don't choose your endusers platform. If you don't go with them, you'll loose them on the long run.
