Office Live Workspace Report Card
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News Analysis. Microsoft is averaging about 5,000 Office Live Workspace signups per day. |
So Kirk Gregersen told me yesterday in a call to discuss the beta service's six-month progress. Microsoft reached 1 million Office Live Workspace beta subscribers about a week ago. That six months is an arbitrary time period, by the way. Microsoft launched the beta in December to U.S. residents that had preregistered. The beta service was made available worldwide six months ago; its conclusion is expected by year's end, when at the current rate subscribers could exceed 1.6 million.
Like comedy, reporting is about good timing. Microsoft's PR agency set up the call with Kirk, who is Microsoft's director of consumer and small business, last week—ahead of Google's bombshell browser announcement, yesterday. Google Gears is integrated into Chrome, providing a way for end users to access applications offline. One of Microsoft's major competitive criticisms of Web 2.0 platform services is the need to be always connected. I'll get to what he said in a few paragraphs.
When Microsoft revamped its Office Live strategy last October and launched the Workspace beta in March, many blogs and news stories looked at the product as a competitive response to Google Docs or Apps. I disagreed then, and do so again now. But with the same qualifications for the distant future that I previously expressed.
Office Live Workspace is about extending Microsoft's existing products to the Web. The company's goals are threefold:
- To pull computational and informational relevance back to desktop software. Microsoft views the Web as an excellent adjunct to desktop software, with emphasis on companion. The goal of companies such as Google is replacement of desktop products such as Office.
- To provide customers with anytime, anywhere access to their Office files. Microsoft rightly recognizes that the increase in mobile workers creates need for more informational access from anywhere.
- To make collaboration available to consumers, small businesses or other organizations that wouldn't otherwise purchase or subscribe to full-blown SharePoint.
Competitively, Google Docs or Apps simply don't have enough adoption to even remotely threaten Microsoft Office. But looking far into the future, Google's free (to consumers) and low cost (to businesses) productivity applications are potential problems. Three reasons:
- Web applications are ideally suited for mobile devices, such as cell phones, because they so easily provide anytime, anywhere access on anything. I can do Google Docs on my cell phone Web browser, but not Office Live Workspace.
- Google's Web browser solves the offline access problem, because of Gears. Chrome users can take their Web applications anywhere that Office can go.
- Microsoft's desktop software revenue stream is, in the long term, vulnerable to Google poaching. Google gives away most stuff for free and recovers revenue through advertising and contextual search. Microsoft must sell its stuff.
How Shiny is Chrome?
This brings me, finally, to what Kirk said about Chrome and Google Gears. He dismissed the integration as any major problem. "While some of the generic aspects of this kind of service, whether it's from Microsoft or some other competitor, are definitely useful for people, whether it's the anywhere access to your stuff or easy sharing, what really is setting apart this OLW—Office Live Workspace—and actually getting people to use the service is this deep integration and compatibility with Office on the desktop."
I know that doesn't sound like a response to Gears' integration into Chrome, but the answer doesn't surprise me. Microsoft executives are trained to respond to questions in such a manner, to turn the answer somewhere else, to something positive. That said, Kirk answered in the way he sees things, methinks.
Problem: Microsoft designed Office Live Workspace to be an adjunct to productivity suite, so of course people are going to use it that way. Just because Office Live Workspace works the way that Microsoft designed it to doesn't mean that people don't want to work another way, such as online in Google Docs.
Earlier in the conversation, Kirk explained: "We're seeing a large amount of usage of the Office Live add-in for the Office client." He said this indicates that many beta users are opening documents in Office and "saving them back to the Workspace. When we first released, this is something we thought would happen, but the beta usage has really proven it out."
Something else that Kirk said about Office Live Workspace usage has huge implications for Chrome and Google Gears. To be clear, he didn't make the statements about Google products but Microsoft software/services. "When people don't have the [Office Live Workspace] add-in installed, the barrier to use a service like this is absolutely much higher," he said. "If they don't have any easy way to go back and forth between the two worlds, it becomes less useful in a practical sense."
As I've repeatedly said, sync is the killer application for the connected world. Gears' integration into Chrome is a good competitive start for Google, but the sync has the work really well. Since the browser launched only yesterday, and in beta, it's too early to say how well the sync will work.
What About Mobile?
But—there's always a but—many people may be content to work online. People start at the desktop with products such as Office because it's still the PC era. But I predict that a rapid move to more mobile devices is underway. As I expressed paragraphs above, mobile devices such as cell phones are well suited to services that are made available anytime, anywhere and on anything. Google's Android will challenge Windows Mobile and other cell phone operating systems.
Office Live Workspace has the anytime, anywhere part down, but is missing on anything access. "Right now in the beta, we don't have mobile access to the Workspace," Kirk acknowledged. "But it's definitely on the road map. It's definitely one of the areas where we've gotten some feedback, but less than what I would have expected, to be honest."
Kirk described mobile online productivity access as "more a wave of the future," although there is demand today among small businesses. "Definitely, mobility is an important area down the road." But mobile access wouldn't come until after Office Live Workspace goes into production, meaning out of beta.
"We are expecting to get out of beta this year," Kirk said. "One of the things we're waiting on is scaling the service globally a bit more." Microsoft updated the service with new features in late August, which in part was the expansion to 11 languages. "We want to get closer to the full number of Office languages before we go out of beta. I think Office is available in about 37 languages right now."
Microsoft has watched the number of subscribers grow, even without splashy advertising. "While 1 million isn't huge in the grand scheme of Office client numbers, we have been actually surprised by the organic traction, given that we haven't been doing a lot of proactive promotion," Kirk said. Microsoft does plan marketing, but after the service exits beta.
[Please send your tips or rumors to watchtips at live.com].
Comments (8)
Microsoft may be signing alot of people up, but they may also be losing the same amount of people. Here's an exerpt of an email I received from Office Live Small Business support after trying to cancel the re-delegation process and re-delegating with more options:
"After further investigation, it appears as though you started the re-delegation process for your domain and may have cancelled it in the process. In any case, I regret to inform you that this domain will not be useable with Microsoft Office Live any longer and in order to use this domain, you will need to use another hosting provider."
I $#!t you not.
Posted by Daniel | September 3, 2008 2:27 PM
Typical of Microsoft is the following quote that you provided:
* "Right now in the beta, we don't have mobile access to the Workspace," Kirk acknowledged. "But it's definitely on the road map. It's definitely one of the areas where we've gotten some feedback, but less than what I would have expected, to be honest."
That's similar to the argument on why Silverlight was ported to Mac but not to Linux. But it's a Catch-22. Microsoft originally found themselves up against Word Perfect for DOS with a near lock on the PC word processing market. Did they give up just because of the fact that there was no demand for a GUI-based word processor? No, they made it so compelling that people found out they wanted it even though they didn't know it before.
Microsoft does know that there is a demand. It's just that the demand is coming from enough non-Microsoft-based phones to bother them.
Handango just emailed my Blackberry Curve this afternoon, offering (among others) a new version of the Documents To Go premium edition by DataViz. It purports to allow you to view, EDIT, and CREATE (not just view!) Microsoft Office 2007/2008 files. And it includes 9 zoom levels for viewing PDF files. All for $29.95. I'm not sure that I am quite that addicted to my Blackberry to see this is a compelling demand for me, but DataViz and InTact Technology seem to see a compelling demand. Compelling enough to release versions of their product for an impressively wide array of smart phones.
See www.dataviz.com/products/documentstogo/winmobile/index.html?device_id=458 for details: DataViz is a gold certified MS partner; but they also offer their products only for devices that run Windows Mobile. It sure looks as if there is a demand: just take a look at the huge device list for which Documents To Go is available.
And from mobileofficeblog.dataviz.com/2008/06/blackberry_documents_to_go_dev.html there is the statement that:
"The response to Monday's release of Documents To Go Premium for BlackBerry has been unbelievable..."
Sure doesn't sounds like the demand for mobile office documentation tools is "less than expected" to me.
Posted by Philosopher | September 4, 2008 12:00 AM
Correction: "but they also DO NOT offer their products only for devices that run Windows Mobile."
(I'd delete and re-enter, or edit, if I could. My apologies, Joe)
Posted by Philosopher | September 4, 2008 12:02 AM
I think that the killer app is more to do with collaboration than with plain sync.
Anyone can sync files, just copy the one with the newest timestamp. The problem comes when you have multiple people working on the same document and making changes to the same part. Merging those changes requires a human 50% of the time (with good revision management software). Designing that UI and making it work with all types of file will be very challenging.
Think of it as SVN (technically more like GIT) for the regular Joe. We all know the benefit of (distributed) revision management for programmers, but normal users do not have this because they mostly deal with binary formats which are difficult to diff. Using XML for Office documents will obviously make this much easier.
I think Google has much more chance of making this work with a smaller feature set than MS does with its heavily bloated format. If Google can cover 90% of use with a vastly superior system then they will get 90% of the market. Leave MS to deal with everyone who is stuck with Office System. With people getting more personal computers (PC, Laptop, Phone) being able to use all of these machines no matter what happens will be a big selling point.
Posted by billybob | September 4, 2008 7:47 AM
Google has had Gears integration in Google Reader and Google Spreadsheets for a while now.
To see it in action you do not need Google Chrome, just Firefox or IE and the Google Gears add-on installed.
Offline reading via Google Reader is a real treat.
Just bring up Google Reader and click that icon in the upper right of your screen to go offline.
I guess I am saying: Google Chrome adoption is not needed to start your online / offline work via Google apps.
Google is already fully working in a "thin" world, Microsoft is in a "thick" world. The key is coming up with the killer app for working on Google Docs in a thin world, so far collaboration on a document is not the killer app. What is the killer app that will push Google Docs to mainstream usage? I am not sure. Perhaps adoption via academic institutions, so instead of e-mailing your document to your professor you just open your workspace to your professor and work collaboratively on the content.
Personally: I am enjoying the Judo that Google is employing against Microsoft. The use of Microsoft's platform, process, and security model to access Google services en mass is the ultimate use of your opponents weight and inertia to defeat them.
Posted by Batgar | September 4, 2008 10:32 AM
I just wish Google would do us all a favor and tweak its service features - namely: spell-check. It should be added to EVERY part of the Google-cloud. BETA is not so sexy any more and Google has made Beta the new Black.
Polished, professional looking work is what we all need and this feature remains clunky, stubborn, and bizarrely missing in certain
G-Apps. I no longer think it’s us… it’s THEM and a dumb omission indeed.
Posted by designpolice | September 4, 2008 11:37 AM
This is a notice to all commenters:
This afternoon I deleted some comments about VCSY, and I unpublished 22 comments believed to be from the Fake I-Man (based on the IP address). I have not removed comments from portuno as some commenters requested. I did remove links in some portuno comments pointing to blogs he wrote about VCSY.
There is no censorship at Microsoft Watch, but spam is deleted. The posts on VCSY are endless, and they should have stopped when the settlement was reached. Any future VCSY comments will be treated as spam and deleted. If they persist, the poster will be banned.
Douglas Taylor and Tom Berber asked for some respite from portuno. Again, I don't censor comments. If it were my choice--and it's not--there would be no anonymous commenting at Microsoft Watch. Douglas and Tom both identify themselves through links. Portuno does not. The weak often hide and from their secrecy attack those in the open.
Portuno is right when he says that I have his e-mail address. But that doesn't really identify who he is, although the information wasn't that hard for me to get. I strongly suggest that portuno clearly identify himself and his associations if he wants to attack the integrity of others.
As for the others, like Douglas and Tom, don't let portuno's insinuations and accusations bother you. He's looking for reaction, methinks. Why feed his need to bleed you?
I found the VCSY posts to be mildly assuming and somewhat annoying. I watched the banter with other commenters and portuno, who clearly sought reaction. Neither he nor either of the I-Mans is getting a reaction from me. I've stepped in because plenty enough time has passed since the VCSY settlement and enough regular commenters have requested action for me to do something. So I'm taking action and will step in again and again until all this nonsense stops.
I am posting this comment on the 10 most recent Microsoft Watch blog posts.
My thanks to all the regular commenters,
Joe
Posted by Joe | September 4, 2008 4:17 PM
Microsoft does know that there is a demand. It's just that the demand is coming from enough non-Microsoft-based phones to bother them.Thanks.
Posted by oyun gemisi | September 6, 2008 9:31 AM