10 ms·

Microsoft will let its business customers run Office Web off their own servers

55 points by newacc 17y ago

ErrantX 17y ago
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.
- sreitshamer 17y ago
  Customers would get more of the benefits of cloud computing if they didn't have to set up their own servers though. It'd be cool if a customer could, say, host the app within the customer's own AWS account.
  - iron_ball 17y ago
    Yeah, but it's well established that big companies will pay ten, a hundred, a thousand times more if it means they have 100% control over the software and data. There are hundreds of thousands of programmers who wouldn't have jobs if not for that fact.
    - edw519 17y ago
      "There are hundreds of thousands of programmers who wouldn't have jobs if not for that fact." Not my experience. There would still be plenty of work for those hundreds of thousands of programmers. The reason that most companies have programmers is not because the want 100% control over the software and data. It's because they have no choice. They can't find pre-packaged software that perfectly supports their business rules. Moving their apps to the cloud does nothing to change the way they run their business. They'll still need the same programmers to support that.
  - ErrantX 17y ago
    the trouble is in large (very large) companies anything not directly inside the control of the company inspires cold sweat and shakes from management types :)
    - edw519 17y ago
      "...anything not directly inside the control of the company inspires cold sweat and shakes from management types..." Along with shareholders, creditors, vendors, customers, auditors, employees, directors, SOX compliance, SEC compliance, hell anyone with a vested interest or fiduciary responsibility.
    - sreitshamer 17y ago
      Don't very large companies use services from providers like SunGard (hosting) and IronMountain (records management for compliance)?
      - ErrantX 17y ago
        yeh your right. My fault i should have highlighted the idea of intellectual property. Company payrolls are not as critical (in this respect) as the latest word document detailing the spec for the next greatest consumer product. Companies will use outside tech when and if they are forced too. If it can come in house or they have a choice then voila :) If offered the choice between standard Office and Google docs the choice is clear for them - keep it on the premesis. However a self hosted version of Office-"Cloud" will appeal to those who see the value in cloud hosted apps (even if the whole point - reliability - is somewhat lost).
- drawkbox 17y ago
  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.
  - rjurney 17y ago
    And what if they offer mirroring/redundancy as part of Azure?
    - eggnet 17y ago
      Then they don't have a privacy advantage anymore.
      - rjurney 17y ago
        If its optional? Encrypted? They can compete as well as anyone then. That is, if their stuff stops sucking. There's no reason to think thats impossible.
  - ErrantX 17y ago
    > 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. It's about accountability (believe me it's a pain). Google wont take responsibility for "problems" - down time for example - in the same way. If everything is in house and there is a break in or critical down time people can be blamed, scalped and so on.
- roc 17y ago
  I'm pretty sure Google gave up on its online office offerings as discrete apps. I think WAVE was their move. It has formatting tools on par with Docs and has a much more natural-for-our-time data model. (mixed content, sharing and collaboration supported as a matter of course, extensible for pulling from or publishing to any number of destinations, etc) And as WAVE is federated, if Google's branded offering to business doesn't include a self-hosting option, someone else's will.
pmorici 17y ago
This will probably spur Google to release a Google Docs Appliance. Similar to how you can buy a Google search appliance.
- qeorge 17y ago
  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.
  - michaelfairley 17y ago
    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.
cpr 17y ago
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.
- RK 17y ago
  Why do you think Office Web is more feature complete than Google Docs? Has anyone even had a chance to review it yet? I honestly have no idea.
- easyfrag 17y ago
  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.
kierank 17y ago
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.
deleted 17y ago
[deleted]
s3graham 17y ago
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.
brown 17y ago
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.
bobbyi 17y ago
Similarly, Microsoft's competitor to salesforce.com (Dynamics) lets customers host their own servers while salesforce does not.
gruseom 17y ago
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.
- altano 17y ago
  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 17y ago
    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-brings-office-back-from-the-dead-tons-of-videos/ http://scobleizer.com/2009/07/13/microsofts-new-office-10-br... The title above it is "Is Office 2010 the world’s largest JavaScript application? (Preview of Web features):"

55 points by newacc 17y ago

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.

sreitshamer 17y ago
Customers would get more of the benefits of cloud computing if they didn't have to set up their own servers though. It'd be cool if a customer could, say, host the app within the customer's own AWS account.
- iron_ball 17y ago
  Yeah, but it's well established that big companies will pay ten, a hundred, a thousand times more if it means they have 100% control over the software and data. There are hundreds of thousands of programmers who wouldn't have jobs if not for that fact.
  - edw519 17y ago
    "There are hundreds of thousands of programmers who wouldn't have jobs if not for that fact." Not my experience. There would still be plenty of work for those hundreds of thousands of programmers. The reason that most companies have programmers is not because the want 100% control over the software and data. It's because they have no choice. They can't find pre-packaged software that perfectly supports their business rules. Moving their apps to the cloud does nothing to change the way they run their business. They'll still need the same programmers to support that.
- ErrantX 17y ago
  the trouble is in large (very large) companies anything not directly inside the control of the company inspires cold sweat and shakes from management types :)
  - edw519 17y ago
    "...anything not directly inside the control of the company inspires cold sweat and shakes from management types..." Along with shareholders, creditors, vendors, customers, auditors, employees, directors, SOX compliance, SEC compliance, hell anyone with a vested interest or fiduciary responsibility.
  - sreitshamer 17y ago
    Don't very large companies use services from providers like SunGard (hosting) and IronMountain (records management for compliance)?
    - ErrantX 17y ago
      yeh your right. My fault i should have highlighted the idea of intellectual property. Company payrolls are not as critical (in this respect) as the latest word document detailing the spec for the next greatest consumer product. Companies will use outside tech when and if they are forced too. If it can come in house or they have a choice then voila :) If offered the choice between standard Office and Google docs the choice is clear for them - keep it on the premesis. However a self hosted version of Office-"Cloud" will appeal to those who see the value in cloud hosted apps (even if the whole point - reliability - is somewhat lost).
drawkbox 17y ago
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.
- rjurney 17y ago
  And what if they offer mirroring/redundancy as part of Azure?
  - eggnet 17y ago
    Then they don't have a privacy advantage anymore.
    - rjurney 17y ago
      If its optional? Encrypted? They can compete as well as anyone then. That is, if their stuff stops sucking. There's no reason to think thats impossible.
- ErrantX 17y ago
  > 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. It's about accountability (believe me it's a pain). Google wont take responsibility for "problems" - down time for example - in the same way. If everything is in house and there is a break in or critical down time people can be blamed, scalped and so on.
roc 17y ago
I'm pretty sure Google gave up on its online office offerings as discrete apps. I think WAVE was their move. It has formatting tools on par with Docs and has a much more natural-for-our-time data model. (mixed content, sharing and collaboration supported as a matter of course, extensible for pulling from or publishing to any number of destinations, etc) And as WAVE is federated, if Google's branded offering to business doesn't include a self-hosting option, someone else's will.

pmorici 17y ago

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

qeorge 17y ago
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.
- michaelfairley 17y ago
  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.

cpr 17y ago

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.

RK 17y ago
Why do you think Office Web is more feature complete than Google Docs? Has anyone even had a chance to review it yet? I honestly have no idea.
easyfrag 17y ago
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.

kierank 17y ago

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.

deleted 17y ago

[deleted]

s3graham 17y ago

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.

brown 17y ago

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.

bobbyi 17y ago

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

gruseom 17y ago

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.

altano 17y ago
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 17y ago
  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-brings-office-back-from-the-dead-tons-of-videos/ http://scobleizer.com/2009/07/13/microsofts-new-office-10-br... The title above it is "Is Office 2010 the world’s largest JavaScript application? (Preview of Web features):"