OneBlog: On The Ever Changing Office
Wednesday, February 22, 2012 0
Microsoft SkyDrive is one of my
favourite online services – as is its close cousin Microsoft Live Mesh (which
is the synchronisation tool for keeping files up-to-date between the cloud and
all of your connected devices). One of
my gripes with the service has always been that SkyDrive and Live Mesh online
storage is completely separate, but it looks like all that is about to change
with Windows 8.
Announced on the EngineeringWindows 8 blog is that the synchronisation elements of Live Mesh will be baked
directly into Windows 8 and straight into SkyDrive. This is fantastic news for me and great news
for all Windows users. But there are far
wider implications of this change in my opinion and it all revolves around
Microsoft’s Office product.
Much has been speculated about
what is expected to happen with Office as Microsoft makes the transition to
tablets and ARM processing; will Office be subject to the ‘Metro UI’ changes
that have taken the lead on the design front of all Microsoft products
recently. As tablets have become more
mainstream, so too have email services, online sharing utilities (Dropbox,
SkyDrive, etc) and Office has become less a “much have” application.
The creation of documents has
become (or will become ever more), less important to these users – why create a
document when an easy to share email can be created? Why create a spreadsheet when you can
download an app that will look after your finances without you having to do any
of the set up work? Our documents have
become a thing of the past; modern day computer users are far more interested
in photographs, web pages/blogs, apps and entertainment.
No longer do users need or want
to create a 100 page document that is difficult to collaborate on, publish,
share and interact with. That’s not to
say that all document creation is dead; there will always be a minority and a
need to create text documents and spreadsheet modelling, but the requirement
has been significantly reduced as a result.
For me, on my home laptop, Word
has been replaced by Microsoft Live Writer to compose my blog posts, my email editor
is an application served up from my browser.
Whilst I still use Excel, it’s uses are becoming less – and the
application I find myself using more and more as a result in Microsoft OneNote.
OneNote is a gorgeous application
that has been around for years and I’ve used a lot, but the reason or need for
many users to use it has not been there.
The inclusion of OneNote on the Windows Phone (and Apple iOS), platform
has seen its usage rocket – I, for one, use it all of the time as a scheduling,
to-do and reminders application, as well as to capture thoughts throughout the
day and important snippets of information I need to keep close at hand for
those just occasions. The fact that
these notes are automatically synchronised with my SkyDrive really means that
OneNote beats Word as my go-to application.
Microsoft have hardly given in
though; they are still expected to launch a new version of Office for Windows 8
and the new WOA (Windows On ARM), tablets that may or may not be given the
Metro UI treatment in its entirety.
Microsoft Office for iPad is also rumoured to be just around the corner,
making good on Microsoft’s stance as a “software company” first and foremost
and not backing away from making those software applications relevant to only
its Windows Operating System (just think how much Microsoft have made from
writing their software for other platforms).
Additionally, whilst the home
user market has shifted towards this ‘online’ culture of tablets and post-PC devices,
enterprise and business are still required to maintain their professional
approach to doing business, which means that documents need to be written,
reports need to be compiled, spreadsheet modelling needs to be completed, which
means those much loved Office applications are still very much in demand in
this space, to be accompanied by other server tools such as SQL, SQL Reporting,
Sharepoint and IIS Internet services; whether those are public or private cloud
based services or more traditional ‘data centre’ set up at this time.
The way we work and create are
changing and Microsoft are still making the tools and services to allow the
provisioning of these changes, but they are coming at the expense of other,
previously established technologies like Office that will continue to be used,
but as times are changing, the elements within Office that we once saw as vital
are now being replaced by other components (in the form of OneNote in
particular).
