Microsoft Office 15: Only for Windows 8, Windows 7 and iPad?
Microsoft is expected to unveil Office 15 (perhaps for Windows 8, Windows 7 and Apple iPad) as soon as Monday, July 16. The software company hopes Office 15 and peer product launches like Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012 will lift sales, profits and partner wins to new heights. But can Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) balance traditional PC software with mobile and cloud services opportunities?
Office 15, coming one week after Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference 2012 (WPC12), surfaces at a critical time for the software company and the PC industry.
- PC sales were flat in Q2 2012, according to Gartner. Some buyers are shifting budget to Apple iPad but others might be waiting for Windows 8 on Ultrabooks.
- Microsoft Office 365 and Google Apps are locked in a cloud applications battle. Office 15 could help to keep partners and customers loyal to Microsoft’s on-premises software while proving hooks into Microsoft’s cloud services.
WPC 2012 Set the Stage
More than 16,000 people attended WPC12, suggesting that Microsoft still has a massive channel partner base of resellers, VARs and distributors. Throughout the event, CEO Steve Ballmer, COO Kevin Turner and Channel Chief Jon Roskill predicted that major product upgrades and cloud services enhancements would lift Microsoft and its partners against Apple, Google, IBM, Oracle and VMware.
Where does Office 15 fit in? With expected support for Windows 8 and Windows 7, it’s clear Microsoft wants customers and partners to shift away from Windows XP and Windows Vista. Office 15 will support the Metro user interface and touch screen capabilities. And watch for Office 15 capabilities on Apple iPad, Microsoft Surface tablets (Windows RT and Windows 8) plus Windows Phone 8, of course.
The VAR Guy doesn’t have a firm feel for a ship date or pricing. But it sounds like partners and customers can expect a beta now and perhaps Office 15 shipments in time for the Windows 8 launch in October, plus Office 15 for iPad and Surface tablets in November. Those are just educated guesses, by the way.
MS Office 15 will be released to iPAD only in your dreams.
The office suites will end up together with the typewriters, and it’s long overdue.
What’s needed is one set of excellent standard open formats to handle the needs (yes, there’s still needs), and truly free competition to get decent applications/apps utilising these open formats.
The battle between MSO and LibreOffice (clones) is a dead end but remains an obsticle as OOxml and MSO is important for Microsoft (vertical Lockin/lockout).
It is not at all that important to customers – although the entrapment by mindshare suggests otherwise.
It’s time for Oracle, Sap and companies like Visma to get proper implementations of their embedded document handling functionality. It’s also time for them to put together proper client apps for pad/mobile. I know Visma is working hard with HTML5 on the client side – time to get som teasers out there.
For 95% of the users, anything not covered by apps should easily be handled within the limitations of e.g iWork or Calligra.
In Your Dreams@3: Microsoft is gonna need some sort of aggressive app strategy across iPad, Android and Windows tablets. Unavoidable. Just like Windows Intune now managing iPad, Android and Windows tablets…
Jack@4: The VAR Guy wishes Oracle had gotten serious about OpenOffice…
-TVG
Definately agree that Microsoft in no way can afford skipping out on support for iOS/Android. If they did, they’ll loose the extremely important vertical connection. And within 12 mnths there’s likely to be 7-800 mill Androids and 4-500 mill iOS units out there. Doesn’t matter how good Windows pads are – if nobody wants them.
Corporations will have to go “all in” W8 before there’s significant motivation to (mass) jump on the WPad bandwagon, and that will not be easy – after all Microsoft claims that 50% now are using W7. They will not be eager to run both W7 and W8, and they will not be eager to replace W7 with W8. The same lag that keeps Microsoft in control wrt document systems will prevent fast transition to Wpads.
Must say: Oracle inherited OpenOffice as a pile of spaghetti through Sun. I was a paying customer of StarOffice long time ago, but Sun didn’t really do their work. Novell didn’t want to submit code due to Sun’s licencing and made their own OOO (Go-oo) – which basicly is the fundament of LibreOffice.
It’s better that Oracle did nothing than something – as they probably would not have forked it if Oracle did some small improvements. Off course, Oracle could have made a 100% effort wrt OOO, but it was never likely that they would do that.
LibreOffice is the alternative for a full dinopackage.
I still maintain that OOO/LibreOffice/MSO are übercomplex dinosaurs, and that a great standard set of formats will kill them. Hopefully. Soon. There’s a few things going on with HTML5, but I’m not sure how that’s playing out.