

Microsoft will let its business customers run Office Web off their own servers - newacc
http://www.informationweek.com/news/software/hosted/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=218500287

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ErrantX
That is _big_. It could kill Google's prospects of getting Docs taken
seriously by larger corporations.

Data ownership was always going to be a big sticking point for the cloud. In
the end corps would probably have moved there simply by default (might have
taken a while though).

But M$ will sell tons of this if they get the licensing right. For a corp it's
like all the benefit of the cloud with none of the data ownership gotcha's.
Superb maneouver.

Google's move.

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drawkbox
It is a very smart move. But the cloud is really about getting your data away
from your own networks, into better redundancy, downtime minimized and not
having to pay for the upkeep.

It is a smart move since they are in the corporate space but companies that
choose it maybe not so smart. Sounds like another way to bolt on Sharepoint
which does alot of what office on the web does already (editing, revisions
etc) and Sharepoint is extremely painful and unusable. Plus let's not forget
Microsoft launched Live Meeting with some office tools to no fanfare at all.

It just makes me laugh a bit that some people think that keeping documents on
their server is more "safe" when they are much easier to break into than
Google and with most times very poor remote data backup procedures and tests.

I'll just make a prediction now that this Microsoft locally hosted office web
will not gain much traction except in the Sharepoint world.

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bendtheblock
_cloud is really about getting your data away from your own network_

For startups and individuals, i.e. those that usually don’t have millions to
spend on datacentre infrastructure, this is the case. However, large
corporations like banks and multinationals can easily afford their own data
centres at multiple locations around the globe, and so already have a solution
for better redundancy and lower downtime. I think that the 'cloud' concept to
them is about moving data _from a fragmented set of desktops and file shares
to an internal cloud_ rather than moving data off their network all together.
This allows them to yield the benefits of the cloud (data consolidated,
employee access from anywhere on _their_ network, virtual workstations, easier
distributed working) without the perceived disadvantages (data ownership and
security). M$ have obviously realised this and made a shrewd move that makes
use of their existing Office market share (they can claim ‘skill reuse’ when
marketing the product and capitalise on the Office brand).

I agree Sharepoint is awful but the sad truth is that the senior managers that
make these type of decisions barely use the software, will just see the
feature list and trust a brand like M$ over the other solutions out there that
work perfectly (and sometimes better) for the rest of us. This is just one of
the reasons why enterprise software usually sucks.

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electromagnetic
Agreed, big international corporations don't need to worry about redundancy,
they need to worry about losing the data at point A (the desktop) before it
ever gets to point B (the data centre).

It would also allow a good go-between, in that a large corporation in the US
could open a small branch for local development without huge overhead but
still able to keep everything on your network.

I've always thought MS was especially talented at keeping corporations
interested in them, which is really their real market. However its a tragedy
that their home computing OS' are the spin off product. I believe that's been
microsofts largest problem for the longest time, it's that Mr Consumer is well
beyond second-class compared with Money-Bags LTD. At least with Apple the home
consumer is treated as a valued customer, you don't have to buy the Ultimate-
Professional-Elite-Edition at $1,000 a pop to get everything a techie needs.

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cpr
I really don't understand how Google Docs (GDocs) gets taken seriously as a
competitor to Office. (And I'm depending on GDocs for my own strategic purpi.)

The formatting capabilities of GDocs are abysmal, not much better than a
typewriter with a few fonts and four styles (paragraph, headers 1 through 3).
Oh, and some poor table support.

Office Web will blow them away for serious document production needs.

Perhaps there are lots of non-serious document users out there, and perhaps
GDocs serves them well. It's hard to know.

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easyfrag
Agreed, yet if it wasn't for Google Docs then Office 2010 would be shipped
solely as desktop software. Let's be thankful that MS takes the competition
seriously.

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pmorici
This will probably spur Google to release a Google Docs Appliance. Similar to
how you can buy a Google search appliance.

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qeorge
Maybe, but Google Docs is nowhere near as mature as Office. Its main advantage
is being web-based, which I'm not sure would translate well to an appliance.

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michaelfairley
The "appliance" term is used by Google to mean that the hardware lives with
the company who's using it, but the users experience roughly the same thing
they would if Google were hosting it. It allows companies to keep all of their
data stored on servers they own and control, while still using Google
technology. A win for everyone, but it comes with a price tag.

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brown
One of the biggest advantages of Google's pure hosted play was that the
backend is immune to piracy. Once MSFT opens this door, it can't be shut. MSFT
has always had a love/hate relationship with piracy, fully knowing that they
can use it to gain market share and struggle to monetize it later. To me, this
move indicates they're willing to accept a little piracy in order to entrench
the market.

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gruseom
Has anyone here actually used Office Web?

A lot of the discussion here is assuming that MS have produced web apps that
are as good or comparable to the Office desktop apps. It's not clear yet
whether that's true.

The most recent thing I saw was a demo video in which they were talking about
two web Excels, one in html and one in Silverlight which had more features.

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altano
Yes, I briefly messed around with an early build. It was _fantastic_. I won't
say more as I haven't been following the publicity and so I don't know what
is/isn't public info.

Disclaimer: I work for MS.

~~~
altano
FYI, here is a video demonstrating the web version of Word and Excel in
FireFox (5th video down):

[http://scobleizer.com/2009/07/13/microsofts-new-
office-10-br...](http://scobleizer.com/2009/07/13/microsofts-new-
office-10-brings-office-back-from-the-dead-tons-of-videos/)

The title above it is "Is Office 2010 the world’s largest JavaScript
application? (Preview of Web features):"

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bobbyi
Similarly, Microsoft's competitor to salesforce.com (Dynamics) lets customers
host their own servers while salesforce does not.

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s3graham
Has it been mentioned whether the client is ie/js/css or Silverlight anywhere?

Either way it'll be a substantial push for installation/upgrade of that tech.

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kierank
This is a nice step forward from services like Outlook Web Access so I can see
how it can be easily incorporated in corporate environments.

