Microsoft Office Live

Microsoft touts cloud computing customers

REDMOND, Wash.--Aiming to show it is still winning customers against Google, Microsoft on Thursday announced deals to provide hosted e-mail and portal software to three big corporate customers.

The software maker said Dow Chemical, Hyatt Hotels, and the University of Georgia are all using the company's hosted e-mail and portal software, known as Microsoft Online. The announcements were timed to come just as Microsoft is set to host its financial analyst meeting here. (I'll be covering the day-long event live, starting around 8 a.m. PT)

In an interview, Hyatt CIO Mike Blake said the company, which … Read more

Trying to sell Office in an era of free Office

As Office 2010 hits retail shelves on Tuesday, it finds itself competing with a host of free rivals, not the least of which are two new options from Microsoft itself.

Redmond has long had to deal with free alternatives, including everything from OpenOffice to Google Docs. And Microsoft has also battled both piracy and the "good enough" factor that prompts many consumers to stick with older software--sometimes several versions old.

With Office 2010, though, Microsoft has created a couple of its own new products that could create an opening for those who want Office, but don't want to pay. Most prominent are the free, browser-based products known as the Office Web Apps seen as a response to Google Docs. The software, which includes slimmed down versions of PowerPoint, Word, OneNote and Excel, are all free to consumers, along with 25 gigabytes of online storage via Windows Live. However, the applications only work when the browser is connected to the Internet.

The second free version of Office is Office Starter, a product that is replacing Microsoft Works as the software most consumers will get for free when they buy a new PC. Although it will give users a genuine, if limited version of both Excel and Word, Microsoft Senior Vice President Chris Capossela said that the goal is to make it easier, not harder to sell the full version of Office.

"Consumers have an Office experience right out of the box," Capossela said. Plus, since the bits for the full Office are on the PC, retailers can sell just a simple card with a product code--cards that can be placed not just in the software aisle, but also in other key selling locations, such as near new PCs and by the cash register.

As for the notion that customers will just stick with the starter edition, Capossela said he isn't too worried. He notes that Windows itself has a basic word processor--WordPad, included by default. And while Starter does include a bona fide version of Word and Excel, he said it lacks PowerPoint, OneNote, as well as many key spreadsheet and word-processing features. To drive that point home, Starter also has a small advertisement that rotates different messages reminding users what they are missing. … Read more

Forcing Office Web Apps to open on an iPad

With Microsoft's Office Web Apps out in the wild, I thought it was time to try to test their limits.

For a while now, Microsoft has said that the experience on the iPhone would be similar to that in other mobile browsers--allowing document viewing, but not the editing and other features found in the full Web Apps.

Through some work, though, I managed to get the iPad to try to open up the full Office Web Apps. By clicking around various pages within Windows Live, I found some that had an option to click to switch to the &… Read more

Microsoft's Web-based Office goes live

Officially joining the browser-based productivity game, Microsoft late Monday released the browser-based versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote.

The Office Web Apps, as the programs are dubbed, are slimmed down versions of the desktop counterparts, allowing for document viewing, sharing, and lightweight editing. Consumers get free access to the tools, along with 25GB of storage as part of Windows Live, while businesses can also host their own version of the Web Apps using the latest version of Sharepoint. The main catch is that using the browser-based versions require an active Internet connection.

"We'll have more to share … Read more

Google: Don't upgrade Office, add Docs

On the eve of the business launch of Office 2010, Google is arguing that there is a better way for businesses to upgrade their productivity suite.

Instead of paying Redmond for the new version, Google argues businesses would be better off using the version of Office they have and mixing in Google Docs to get their dose of collaboration and Web-based tools.

"Most people find, and they maybe perhaps don't expect it at first, that Google Docs works quite well with Office and in fact it makes Office better," Google Enterprise President Dave Girouard said in an … Read more

Microsoft's Lili Cheng on FUSE, Spindex, and more

SAN FRANCISCO--It's always fun to catch up with Microsoft's Lili Cheng. In addition to being a bundle of energy, she's always working on some interesting project.

In her years, she has worked in Microsoft's research labs and on the Windows team. Since last year, she has been heading a social software project known as Future Social Experiences, or FUSE Labs. The effort, under Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie, looks at how to merge the social computing world with traditional software.

At Web 2.0 on Tuesday, Cheng showed off Spindex, the group's latest project. Like … Read more

Microsoft finalizes Office 2010

Microsoft said Friday that it has wrapped up development work on the next version of the Office family, including Office 2010, SharePoint 2010, Visio 2010, and Project 2010.

The products were "released to manufacturing," which is the final engineering step. The products are slated to be available for businesses next month and Microsoft is holding a launch event on May 12 in New York.

"RTM is the final engineering milestone of a product release and our engineering team has poured their heart and soul into reaching this milestone," vice president Takeshi Numoto said in a blog … Read more

Microsoft creates Office plug-in for Moodle

Microsoft is releasing a free add-on that could make life easier for teachers, professors, and others who use the online educational system Moodle.

The plug-in, which works with Office 2003 and Office 2007, allows users to save Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents directly to the open source online service. It also allows users to edit directly in Office a document saved on Moodle, which is widely used in colleges and at some K-12 schools as well.

"We know that it's out there in force," Jon Perera, general manager of Microsoft's Educational Products Group, said of Moodle. &… Read more

Microsoft's big gamble with free Office

SAN FRANCISCO--Microsoft has a new plan to make more money from Office: give it away.

With Office 2010, one of the biggest changes is how many ways there are to get Microsoft's most profitable software program for free.

In addition to the free, browser-based Office Web Apps, Microsoft is also offering PC makers the ability to install a basic version of Office on new computers. The new program, Office Starter, includes a stripped-down version of Word and Excel. PC makers, retailers and Microsoft can all make money if the PC buyer later upgrades to a paid version of Office. … Read more