Yesterday, I attended the launch of Office 2010 at Microsoft's headquarters in North Ryde, Sydney. I hadn't expected too much of the day as lets face it Office is a fully featured productivity suite that already has more features than most users can really use. My interest was in the launch of the Office Online tools as competition with the Google Apps suite and in particular, Google Docs.
I was actually very surprised with Office Online; although they are not exact copies of the desktop applications, they are very good and offer significantly more features than Google Docs. Microsoft have taken the approach of launching Office Online with a good set of the most used features whilst leaving out the advanced features (which most users do not use anyway). Some of these more advanced features will no doubt make their way into the online version at some point as Microsoft evolve the products but for the moment, they are certainly very usable. With one step, Microsoft have leapfrogged their main competitors and in my opinion they now lead the market in the online office productivity tool category. Recognising how late Google are with some of the latest updates to Google Docs, I am sure Mountain View are watching this release with interest.
Another differentiator between Office Online and Google docs is that organisations can, if they choose, actually deploy Office Online within their own network which removes some of the issues organisations have with data sovereignty and security. It remains to be seen whether this deployment model is taken up within medium and large enterprises but it could significantly shift the balance in the online productivity tool market.
Once again, the cloud market takes an unexpected turn which could have significant implications for both vendors and organisations looking to move to the cloud.
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