Better Late Than Never

Microsoft have finally seen the writing on the wall and adopted a more web-centric focus on their products.  This has been on the boil for over a year now with much marketing and rhetoric being delivered as a result.  But there has been one major omission from the software giant’s new-found religion: Office.

Microsoft Office has been one of the dominant products that the company has depended on for its bread and butter.  But it is also the one most under threat as alternative suites such as OpenOffice, Zoho and of course Google Docs gain more and more traction.  So it comes as little surprise that Microsoft announced today that they will begin offering a web-based version of the ubiquitous productivity suite.

At the Microsoft PDC2008 conference being held in LA this week, Microsoft announced that the next version of Microsoft Office will include “lightweight” browser-based versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote.  Other suites have been available for years so Microsoft have had plenty of time to watch and learn.  The real question will be “have they?”.  Also of note is that the other three big players in this market all offer their services for free.  How will Microsoft change its revenue model to seriously compete?  I suspect it’ll either have to be on features (unlikely) or a more scalable licensing arrangement where the basic features are free, but subscribers pay for greater levels of functionality.

This move ties in well with the new initiative from Microsoft: Windows Azure.  This is Redmond’s new cloud-computing platform that will let developers create and deliver programs over the Internet.  This signals a new push from Microsoft to reassert its market dominance in a competitive environment that seems to have changed too quickly for the lumbering giant.  What happens in the next 12 months will be very interesting indeed.