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Speaking at the Midsize Enterprise Summit in Paris on Wednesday, Gartner analyst Annette Jump said research done by the group showed that only about 2 percent of companies that weren't signed up for Microsoft's Software Assurance plan had adopted for the previous version of the productivity suite--Office 2003.
The software assurance plan ties companies into automatic upgrades of new Microsoft software at a discounted rate. The plan was updated late last year after coming under fire for allegedly locking users into buying unnecessary Windows upgrades.
"Very few companies will be able to justify buying Office at full price, which shows the importance of SA to Microsoft. Only 2 percent of companies surveyed last year who were using Office 2003 weren't on SA," Jump said.
Companies should quantify carefully how moving to the next version of Office will benefit their users, Jump said. Unlike the move to Windows Vista, which the analyst claims can be staggered--supporting two or more versions of Office is prohibitively costly.
"We believe that many companies will have to do a forklift migration with Office 2007, as supporting two versions of Office is very complex and will be too complicated for most," Jump said.
Office 2007 will include several new features, including an all-new user interface and new XML-based file formats.
Microsoft will offer new editions for the workplace. In the Professional Plus version, Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook are augmented with the Access and Publisher products that come with the Professional edition, the Office Communicator instant-messaging program, InfoPath form creation software, and server-based content management and forms management capabilities.
There will also be an Enterprise version, which adds Groove, the collaboration program developed by Ray Ozzie that Microsoft acquired last year. Users who get the Groove desktop software have the choice of running their own Groove server or subscribing to a hosted service.
Jump added that few companies will be in a rush to deploy Office 2007 immediately, as many have only recently installed Office 2003. Although Office 2007 will run on Windows XP, most companies will probably look to have Vista installed before migrating to it.
"Office 2007 will only catch 10 percent of Microsoft's installed base by the middle of 2008, as only a small percentage will have moved to Vista by that point," Jump added.
And depite Microsoft's claims that Office 2007 will have improved graphical interfaces, the costs of supporting the suite through a help desk will actually increase in the short term as users become acquainted with new features, according to Gartner.
"They are trying to make it much more user-exposed, and the menu will change depending on what activity you do," Jump explained. "In the first few months, the cost of help desk support will go up despite the fact that Microsoft says the graphical interface will help drive down calls."
Companies that have a conservative approach to technology and aren't planning to integrate Office 2007 into their core business process may even choose to skip the release altogether or deploy it much later, Jump said.
However, she added, all companies will be required to deploy converters to ensure that their users are able to interact with early adopters of Office 2007. "All of you will have to deploy converters later this year or early 2007," she told her audience of IT professionals.
Andrew Donoghue of ZDNet UK reported from London.
See more CNET content tagged:
Software Assurance, Microsoft Office 2007, Groove Networks Inc., Microsoft Office, Gartner Inc.
Microsoft 27-45%
Who is the bad guy here
Go Open office share the truth
Open office does everything 99.9999 people can use.
There's your bad guy right there.
Software: (margin is generally higher than hardware companies)
Redhat (sells 'free' software): 28.63%
Microsoft: 31.59%
Adobe: 23.13%
Oracle: 23.15%
Hardwar:
Apple: 9.97%
Intel: 20.46%
Cisco: 20.59%
c:\windows\dead
And people are stupid enough to stick with an over priced product instead of going with a cheaper/free product (i.e. OpenOffice) than the fool and its money SHOULD be soon parted.
most of us couldn't run Vista, and there are no Office
improvements which justify any sort of upgrade. MS has given us
two dogs of software, and we're expected to be good little sheep
and fork over the money to keep MS profitable.
Not hardly. Even the dumbest PC owner can spot this flying fraud.
I still use Win2k Pro / Office 97 at home. At work we have Win
XP and office XP for most boxes. Really though, I haven't seen
any reason for the office XP upgrade. People talked about
document compatibility, but with the exception of a few access
databases I haven't seen anything that office 97 can't open.
Most of our office computers couldn't run Vista alone, much less the new flavor of Office. I don't know how most companies operate, but the Dell Dimension "entry level" type 60GB HD/512MB RAM/P4 works just fine for running Word, Excel and the accounting dept's accounting system client software.
Why should I lay out more cash to upgrade hardware, simply to run their software that I don't need to upgrade in the first place? Really, my accountants could still do their jobs with 2000Pro and Office 97.
Vista is just great! It looks way better than XP.
You got Live services with it, and you can even port your
Samsung Origami product to eat for easy tranfer of data. Plus
Office 2007 is way better than the previous upgrade, look and
feel wise. And it has gadgets.. if you haven't tryed it already than
your in for a real treat, once you've tryed it. Plus its got flip 3d..
Man it just kicks ass! Watch out Apple.. cause Vista is here!!!
Yeah, Apple is scared of a poor imatation that takes more hardware to run and is still extreme insecure.
There is no reason to get either Vista or Office 2007, unless you are a completely clueless MS fanboy.
Business really don't care about gadgets, or 3D effects, etc. Software is a tool, nothing more. If the tool doesn't solve a problem or make work easier, what's the point.
As for Vista kicking ____, you have to be kidding me, what Vista? Oh that Vista the Vista that keeps getting pushed back and back and back.
I'm not a Mac user (yet) but claiming Vista is here and its great is a total joke.
;-)
http://www.techknowcafe.com/content/view/365/42/
I actually use OO myself in an Office 2003 environment and no one knows the difference. The only problem is that it does not allow shared documents, which is kind of a pain when you need too but is used very rarely.
At home we all use Open Office, kids do their homework on it, use Impress for presentations and the whole time I love how much $ I have saved to spend on other things.
MS can update office all they want, I won't be making the jump and won't be approving a purchase of the new version. The old versions do all that we need to do. I don't need fancy graphics, I need a solid piece of software that gets the job done and doesn't cost me and arm & a leg.
And those millions outside the US aren't exactly tripping over themselves to get those "new features."
In the third world, most users can't even use the features in Office 97. Even basic features like tabs and line centering (tip: using spaces is not the way to center a line).
Are these the millions who will be tripping over themselves to get Office 12?
M$ Office @ $400.00+
Corel WordPerfect @ $300.00+
OpenOffice.org @ Free/*Donation
Two are proprietary, one is Open-Source.
The proprietary suites will take you to court if you attempt to change their code or distribute the program to any other system other that the one it was bought for. Open-source encourages your input, change, & its distribution.
The proprietary suites are expensive, even though they have bugs that could either comprimise your system, or cause a shut-down of your system. Open-source finds the bugs and glitches usually within a week of detection, and someone in the open-source world usually creates either a work-around, or a fix in that timeframe.
Proprietary suites take years to be re-worked and work-arounds or fixes come about once a month...if at all.
The open-source community issues fixes as bug reports come in, warns their user base of potential problems, and re-works the code about every 6 months.
The cost of the two proprietary suites are cost-prohibitive for business, while the open-source model is cost-effective, and is totally compatible with these proprietary suites.
If a business, or individual user contributes any funds to an open-source offering, those funds go directly to that offering for its benefit and its progress. The proprietary suites may, or may not use the funding for that project. Those funds usually goes to pay for other things, like advertisement.
Open-source has the best advertisement in the world. Word of mouth. Nothing spreads faster than good, or bad news. Well, OpenOffice.org is great news! Not only does it do all that it should as an office suite, but is downloadable, tranferrable, and they won't sue you if you replicate it onto another system, or 1,000 systems for that matter.
Open-source encourages your donations to their cause, but never forces you to contribute. You contribute what you can. That is the most cost-effective model of all the suites.
In summary: Here is an office suite upgrade that is entirely justifiable. Whether your a business, or an end-user looking for a cost-effective office suite, the choice is dramatically clear. Openoffice.org is the winner, hands down. Try it now! Go to www.openoffice.org, and see what all the buzz is about!
I switched two years ago, and I am so glad I did!
I think Microsoft's biggest competition is the older versions of their software. If something is "good enough", users won't want to pay hard-earned money for an upgrade (and to upgrade their systems to support the software, and retrain their users).
And if I did want certain features, I'd look at OpenOffice and the likes first. I'd rather spend more time learning something new than hundreds of dollars PLUS more time learning something new.
1. For some large corporations, the cost of MS Office is insignificant compared to their other software/hardware purchses.
2. MS Office has some very handy things in it:
--Word's Compare Documents feature, with bubbles in the margin showing the changes
--Excel's PivotTables, a wonderful way to analyze certain types of data
--Macros that can let people do certain tasks in minutes instead of hours
--A host of Outlook features
3. Tight integration with other MS products, such as SharePoint
4. MS Office is the de facto standard. If you're using it, you can bet that every other major company will have someone who can read or edit your files.
The MS Office features you've described are all in current versions of MS Office. The point of the article is whether or not users (whether Office 6, Office 97, Office 2000, Office 2001, and other Office brnads) find a compelling reason to upgrade.
Heck, Microsoft has already had a hard time convincing Office 97 users to upgrade (ref: The Dinosaurs ad campaign).
"MS Office is the de facto standard. If you're using it, you can bet that every other major company will have someone who can read or edit your files"
The file formats of MS Office are the de-facto standard, not the program itself. That's why most other office suites can open read and edit those files.
If someone sends you a Word or Excel file, are you 100% sure that MS Office was used to make and edit them?
- Feature Comparison correction
- by mjneedles June 28, 2006 5:45 AM PDT
- In your list of features in MS Office, you listed Pivot Tables, as if that were an exclusive feature. It is not; OpenOffice.org also has it, called Data Pilot. I know, because I was the first to request the feature.
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