Comments on: Office 12 to ease lines of communication

Microsoft is putting more emphasis on helping workers collaborate in the next version of the productivity software, an exec says.

Battle Lines Being Drawn!

To the extent that Office 12 which Microsoft is putting more emphasis on collaboration in this version of Office and which will be coming up against the likes of IBM's IBM Workplace Collaboration Services: http://www.lotus.com/products/product5.nsf/wdocs/workplacehome the battle lines could certainly be drawn where Workplace Collaboration Services is a single product that provides a full range of integrated ready-to-use communication and collaboration tools that enable people to do their jobs more effectively ? anytime, anywhere. With personal and "professional" interests - Are there any bets!

;-)

here's an almost dead cert bet

Microsoft's Office Communicator 2005 will open enough security holes to keep us all entertained until Longhorn gets launched.

[Eggs Ackley]

Battle lines? I don't think so. Sales pitch? YES!!

Sheldon, why do I get the distinct impression you work for IBM on their Workplace Collaboration Services projects?

Collaboration software is BULLS HIT. Every company I've seen that uses Notes or Outlook, was basically wasting 100s of 1,000s of $s per year on the licensing of nothing more than email software.

Other than email, people like to use the calendar ... usually, to schedule meetings. It's ironic. You would think that "collaboration software" is supposed to reduce face-to-face meetings and conference calls, but it actually increases them.

[Earl Benser]

So far...

.. MS Office has been a reasonably useful program. Word has
serious delusions of grandeur about becoming the total
publishing program for the world. Unfortunately, Word also
became a serious versin of bloatware in the process (maybe
move over, Adobe?)

And now MS is talking about adding even more 'integrated'
features to the new Office, when it already has too many. I just
wish that MS had at least some understanding of 'modular'
program structure, with features that can be added or removed
to configure the application properly for the user.

I have already stripped Adobe applications from my computers
because they were inefficient bloastware designs. I just may have
to avoid future versions of Office for the same reason.

For some, the bloatware designs may be a good thing.
Obviously, some people are still buying Adobe products. And
others will cheerfully pay for MS's latest 'integrated' product. I
prefer what you could call 'intelligent design', by people who are
more concerned with customer needs than with grandiose
corporate wet dreams.

[chassoto--2008]

Not a new ploy

This is their attempt to close the loop on open source alternatives -
tie everything in the suite to a Windows server, and conveniently
leave out any capability to connect alternative suites to those
servers. Nothing new here...