MS Office 2010 Takes Fight with Google to the Cloud
Business Standard

The beta version has seen over 1.3 mn downloads; over 2,000 firms in India are moving to the latest version.

Last September, research firm IDC had cautioned that while Microsoft Office still held the lion’s share of the market for office productivity suites, Google was rapidly gaining ground. The survey indicated that 19.5 per cent of the respondents were in organisations that used Google Docs in some form, up from 5.8 per cent a year earlier.

Google Docs, unlike an offline suite, offers its services on the cloud — a metaphor for internet. The market opportunity is huge. IBM, for instance, pegs the global market for cloud computing services to be worth $126 billion by 2012. The global market was $48 million in 2008, according to the information technology major.

Microsoft sought to plug this hole in the cloud by unveiling its Office 2010 a couple of days back. The suite includes “Web Apps”, which allow business users to store documents centrally and access them anytime, from anywhere, similar to online office suites like Google Docs and Zoho. It is in beta for individual users till mid-June. The professional version of the software would be available at Rs 20,000 and the consumer and SMB versions at Rs 5,000 and Rs 10,000, respectively.

“The response to Office 2010 suite (which includes Web Apps) in India has been excellent,” said Rajan Anandan, managing director, Microsoft India. He adds that Web Apps can easily match the online offerings of competing players, primarily online search giant Google.

The beta version has seen over 1.3 million downloads and over 2,000 companies, including Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), Lowe Lintas, Virgin Mobile, Mindtree Consulting and Infosys Technologies are moving to the latest version.

Office 2010 will help people collaborate online and offline with ease, said Anandan. He, for instance, no longer uses a phone in his office. “Hardly anyone at Microsoft uses a phone anymore,” he quipped. Instead, Anandan uses his company's Unified Communication (UC) collaboration tools to take calls (with voice over internet protocol or VoIP), structure messages, set up and attend web conferences, and exchange notes.

The power of these collaboration tools is being extended to the cloud, too, with Office Web Apps, according to Anandan. “Imagine the cost savings from UC tools for companies,” he said, adding, “Now think of Office 2010 and Web Apps that can increase that savings manifold for enterprises and small businesses by taking the offerings to the cloud, thereby reducing costs and increasing productivity.”

The new edition of Office 2010 has new features that enable users to embed videos in PowerPoint presentations, have voice-to-text conversion for voice mails on Outlook or see trends for a select set of information (and not the entire document), said Anandan.

The new suite also allows co-authoring of documents simultaneously on multiple workstations. Different people can connect simultaneously to view documents and make changes in real-time.

“Over the last 12 months, our strategy has been to sharpen focus on cloud services. Office 2010 was a logical conclusion,” said Anandan. Microsoft, he added, offers cloud services across three layers in India. The first is “Software as a service”, or SaaS, which includes Microsoft Online Services with over 600 commercial customers in India and over 10,000 seats. Its partners include HCL Technologies, Infosys Technologies and Wipro Infotech. They provide the value-added services. Microsoft's hosted ERP partners include RoboSoft and Net4India.

The software giant also has a cloud offering named PaaS, or “Platform as a service”. This revolves around its recently-launched Windows Azure Services platform in India. HCL Technologies uses Microsoft's management application developed on Windows Azure to help customers manage data. Likewise, Sportz Line has migrated an industry-leading sports analytics application to provide real-time data to teams. Two cricket teams in Indian Premier League are its customers.

“Infrastructure as a service”, or IaaS, is the third cloud-computing offering from Microsoft, according to Anandan. It has a partnership with Reliance Communications (RCom) for cloud computing services, wherein it provides enterprises and SMBs in India access to a variety of enterprise-scale IT solutions, applications and services on the pay-as-you-go model. These include server hosting, data storage and archival. Microsoft’s virtualisation (a technology which helps companies reduce the number of servers and, hence, hardware costs) and management technologies have helped RCom reduce input costs involved in providing these services.

The concept of collaborating in real-time on the cloud, or internet, is not new. Online developers like Zoho, Upstartle, 2Web Technologies and 37Signals use internet to allow collaboration. For instance, if a file is hosted on the web, rather than a local server or a desktop, one can allow several users to read and write from it at once.

Online giant Google took the concept a step further with its free Docs office suite (it rolled out an updated Docs service last month which features enhanced collaboration tools) that offers support for real-time collaboration.

Office 2010, too, enables real-time collaboration, either from the Office desktop applications or the all-new Office 2010 Web Apps. In addition to the Outlook updates, there are new PowerPoint tools for internet-based presentations and handling videos. The new “Broadcast Slide Show” tool is expected to be the most-used new feature of PowerPoint. Windows Live also will run Web-based versions of the Office software, as part of the company's SkyDive service.

However, Microsoft, according to Anandan, does not see these cloud offerings replacing personal computer (PC) software. “We see them as complementary offerings,” he said. The online versions will be geared toward tasks best done online, such as collaborative editing. The PC software will be where people will continue to go to create documents, spreadsheets, and PowerPoint decks.

Globally, over 8.6 million people use Office 2010 and related products. Office Mobile 2010 will soon be available on Windows 6.5 mobile handsets and on a broad range of Nokia smartphones starting with Nokia’s business-optimised range, E-series.

Meanwhile, Google, which created cloud-based rivals to Word and Excel, is cajoling business users to switch to those instead of upgrading to Office 2010. Microsoft, which has nearly 95 per cent of the market for office software, however, is not taking things lying down.

Test Flights into the Google Cloud

NY Times

 

Liam McLoughlin, 17, has compiled Google's open-source code into a working version of its planned Chrome OS. His mother, Stefanie, brought him a snack.

 

JORDON WING is a devoted user of Google products like Gmail, the Chrome browser and Google Docs, the Web-based word processing program.

A few weeks ago, Mr. Wing, a high school student from Spokane, Wash., took another Google product out for a spin: the Chrome Operating System.

Google is not expected to unveil the highly anticipated Chrome OS until the end of the year, and the software is expected to run, at first, only on the class of low-cost PCs called netbooks. But Mr. Wing, along with a growing number of other Google fans, did not want to wait.

These people are downloading home-brewed versions of the operating system derived from the esoteric source code, which Google releases under the name Chromium. Google is developing the Chrome system as an open-source project and periodically releases the Chromium code online, to let other Web developers contribute to the project.

Several resourceful users have taken those undistilled vats of source code and done something Google says it never expected: they’ve compiled it into working versions of the operating system, tailoring it for use on dozens of computer brands and making it available to regular folks who want to preview one possible vision of their high-tech future.

“Maybe it’s because I’m still kind of a kid, but all this new stuff is exciting,” said Mr. Wing, who installed Chromium on his Dell Inspiron laptop and recently extolled its virtues. “The idea of an operating system that really only does one thing — gets you onto the Internet very quickly — is perfect for me.”

When officially released, Chrome OS will represent a milestone for Google. It will not only be its entry into the market for operating systems, long dominated by its archrival Microsoft, but also a new computing paradigm.

The Chrome operating system is designed to allow computers to boot up to the Web within seconds, onto a home screen that looks like that of a Web browser. Users of devices running Chrome will have to perform all their computing online or “in the cloud,” without downloading traditional software applications like iTunes and Microsoft Office, or storing files on hard drives. Devices running Chrome will receive continuous software updates, providing added security, and most user data will reside on Google’s servers.

Some analysts are skeptical that regular folks will flock to devices that place such severe limits on their computing activities. Chrome OS “is a bet on a future in which we move beyond rich applications and everything eventually gets delivered through a Web browser,” said Michael Gartenberg, an analyst at the research firm Interpret. But that time is not here yet, he said: “Chrome this year and next year is mostly a science project.”

But for legions of Google heads, the fact that it feels like a science project adds to the allure. Working versions of Chromium have appeared across the Web and have been downloaded more than a million times. By all accounts, the most popular and functional have been on the Web site of a 17-year-old in Manchester, England, who goes by the Internet handle “Hexxeh.”

Liam McLoughlin, as Hexxeh is known to family and friends, is a college student and programmer who has taken Google’s Chromium code and compiled it so the operating system can be downloaded to a separate USB memory stick, which can then be used to boot up a computer. He has spent countless evenings and weekends configuring Chromium to work on various kinds of computers, including the Macintosh, and added features that Google has not gotten to yet, like support for the Java programming language.

He explained that his work on Chromium began partly as a way to demonstrate his computing skills and possibly open doors in the technology industry. It also sprang from an interest and belief in Google’s computing vision. “Many people don’t care about how PCs work and all the security software that comes with today’s computers. They just want to use the Internet,” he said.

Since last fall, a small but vibrant community has formed around his work, encouraging him with ideas and supporting his efforts by providing money for servers and other programming tools.

Steve Pirk, a former systems engineer at the Walt Disney Company and now based in the Seattle area, helped to support a coding marathon this year by donating $50 via PayPal, which Mr. McLoughlin spent on a supply of highly caffeinated Jolt cola.

Mr. Pirk said he tested Hexxeh’s resulting software, code-named Flow, on a half-dozen computers; all functioned properly running Chromium from a USB drive. He says he looks forward to the day when low-powered but fully functional computers running Chrome can help lead to a new wave of telecommuting. “The more work we do in the cloud, the less need there is for people to be in physically secure network environments,” he said.

All of the activity around these prenatal incarnations of Chrome is something of a double-edged sword for Google. The company wants developers and other companies to work beside its engineers, developing their own versions of the operating system. But Google says it did not anticipate that regular people would start using Chromium — and evaluating it — before it was ready for prime time.

NEVERTHELESS, the Google executive in charge of Chrome OS took pains to express support for the Google fans trying Chromium — and for their presumptive band leader, Mr. McLoughlin.

Sundar Pichai, vice president of product management, said that “what people like Hexxeh are doing is amazing to see.” Though he called the Chromium releases an “unintended consequence” of the process of developing open-source software, he said, “If you decide to do open-source projects, you have to be open all the way.”

Microsoft Launches Spindex for Social Search

Network World

Microsoft has opened an inviation-only tech preview of a cloud service that melds social with personalized search

 

 

Microsoft's Fuse Labs launched a pilot project that aggregates social media sites like Facebook and Twitter with Bing and gives the user a single interface with which to use them all. The company announced the initiative yesterday at the at the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco and has been receiving lots of attention for it.

I immediately fired up the URL and went to try it out, only to discover that I needed an invite before I could do so. Interestingly, when I tried the site on Firefox, nothing happened ... it let me "login" with my Windows Live ID but offered me no other information. When I fired up IE 8, I was offered the chance to ask for an invite. ... I hope that this is not "shades of things to come" in that Spindex will favor IE the way it favors Bing. I can understand Bing (after all, Google search is integrated into the Chrome browser, and if there's a way to get Chrome to use Bing it's not easy to find.) But if the cloud service itself is going to prefer one browser over another, that's another story.

Spindex is intended to not only aggregate data from select social media sites, but to let you see trending information, according to a blog post by Lili Cheng, general manager of Microsoft Fuse Labs, the research facility dedicated to social networking experiments (like Outlook Social Connector). She writes:

    "As you increasingly tweet, post to Facebook, and capture ideas with tools like Evernote, we want to help you get the most out of your social activity by exposing the right information, at the right time, in a way that’s meaningful. That’s the theory behind Spindex ... making it simple for you to find what’s new, see personalized trending topics, and generally make the most of the time you spend being social on the Web."

Not surprisingly, as Spindex is a cloud service, it is built on Azure.

Because it is integrated with Bing, Microsoft hopes to make the app more than just an aggregation page. According to the Spindex marketing page:

    "Spindex is not just a social reader – as you browse your friends’ updates, Spindex continually suggests related content from Bing – giving you better insight into the topics and trends spinning around you."

Microsoft is certainly not the first to attempt to build a master social media dashboard. FriendFeed is probably the best known of this type, and it supports dozens of services with no bias towards integrating one over another. There's Tweetdeck for Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn. There's Diggsby, my personal favorite, as it integrates several instant messaging accounts (in my case AIM and GTalk, but it also works with Yahoo, Windows Live, others), plus integrates Facebook and LinkedIn, etc. Both of those are apps that reside on the device rather than in the browser.

Microsoft says that Spindex is different from FriendFeed as it will include a personalized, secure, search of your social media accounts. This integrated, searchable feed will be accessible from any browser.

I'm not sure if that alone is enough to make Spindex a hit, given how many other social media aggregators already exist, and how many others have tried to build a hit in this area and failed. Indeed, Spindex was reportedly code-named the "Impossible Project." Social media aggregation isn't impossible, just difficult. Microsoft's success will depend on its willingness to add the services that people really want to use (even Google Buzz?) and not the ones Microsoft wants people to use (Windows Live).

A big difference.

Microsoft to Make Web-Based Programs a Billion-Dollar Business, Elop Says‏
Bloomberg

Microsoft Aims for $1 Billion in Web-Program Sales

 

Microsoft Corp.’s business-software unit expects to get at least $1 billion from Web versions of its Office and e-mail programs in the next three to five years, said Stephen Elop, head of the division.

Over that period, Microsoft predicts about half its customers for e-mail and collaboration software will switch to so-called cloud versions of the programs, which are stored and run from Microsoft’s server farms.

“Three years, five years, is it a billion-dollar business? I’m quite certain it will be,” Elop said in an interview on Bloomberg Television. “Because so much of what we’re doing is focused on this particular area, we’re seeing very large customers making large commitments in this direction. You’ll see it grow rapidly.”

The rising revenue will mean Microsoft can increase profit at the unit, Microsoft’s largest, even as analysts predict margins will narrow, Elop said. The company is readying its first Web-based versions of word-processing and spreadsheet software to match Google Inc., which is trying to steal Microsoft’s corporate customers and win over consumers.

Redmond, Washington-based Microsoft is also pushing cloud versions of its Exchange e-mail program and SharePoint, which allows employees to work together on projects and set up corporate Web sites.

Microsoft wants to use that software to lure users away from International Business Machines Corp. More than half of customers for these Microsoft programs are switching from IBM’s Lotus, Novell Inc.’s GroupWise and other competitors, said Microsoft Vice President Ron Markezich in an interview this week.

Microsoft rose 7 cents to $28.67 at 4 p.m. New York time on the Nasdaq Stock Market. After gaining 57 percent last year, the shares have lost 5.9 percent in 2010.

Google, IBM Join Forces To Offer Cloud Computing Services

"The cloud has higher value in business," says Google CEO Schmidt.





As Microsoft and Yahoo go their separate ways, IBM and Google are cozying up to move into what they think will be the dominant IT delivery model of the future--so-called cloud computing.

Over the next year, IBM and Google plan to roll out a worldwide network of servers from which consumers and businesses will tap everything from online soccer schedules to advanced engineering applications. The IBM-Google cloud, fresh off testing at several major universities, runs on Linux-based machines using Xen virtualization and Apache Hadoop, an open source implementation of the Google File System.

Google already has launched numerous cloud-based services for consumers, such as e-mail and storage. With the exception of security requirements, "there's not that much difference between the enterprise cloud and the consumer cloud," Google CEO Eric Schmidt said earlier this month during an appearance in Los Angeles with IBM chief Sam Palmisano. "The cloud has higher value in business. That's the secret to our collaboration."

A STUDY IN CONTRASTS
Palmisano and Schmidt insisted that their companies are similar, despite obvious differences. "We're boring, they're exciting. We're slow, they're fast. We're fat, they're skinny," Palmisano joked. But the contrasts are mostly skin deep, he said, noting that the companies share "a common technical alignment."

IBM believes the cloud model will allow it to reach small and midsize companies around the world, which it says represent a $500 billion IT market that it has trouble serving profitably through the usual sales channels. Google and IBM could conceivably supply computer users--both business and consumer--with hosted offerings ranging from basic productivity software like word processing and calendaring to sophisticated management and security tools through IBM's Tivoli brand and Google's Postini unit.

Under a portion of its cloud strategy it's calling the Blue Business Platform, IBM plans to launch an online marketplace offering its own pre-integrated products and services, as well as those from other software developers. Customers will be able to use the software they buy "on premises or in the cloud," Palmisano said.

The IBM-Google alliance started a couple of years ago with a phone call from Palmisano to Schmidt. "Sam called and wanted to know what we thought about distributed computing," Schmidt said. "We weren't looking to sell them anything," Palmisano insisted. Last October, the companies gave their joint platform project to several top engineering universities, including Carnegie Mellon, MIT, and Stanford, to poke away at. Now, IBM and Google say it's ready for wider use.

Their partnership is solidifying just when Microsoft's efforts to acquire Yahoo have broken down. Microsoft's approach to the cloud trend is to move some of its applications to the Internet under a strategy it calls software plus services. But the bulk of its profits still come from products either sold in boxes or preinstalled on PCs. Microsoft's enormous user base gives the company time and space to get its Internet efforts right. But, for the first time in years, Redmond is seeing clouds on the horizon--and they look a lot like Google and IBM.


By Paul McDougall
InformationWeek; May 12, 2008