Office 2010: Microsoft’s next big challenge

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And that’s perhaps the biggest mountain that Microsoft faces with Office.

For the vast majority of businesses, they require little more from Office than a solid word processing package and some basic spreadsheet tools. And for the firms that fall into that category, Office 2000 will tick those boxes perfectly well.

It’s an oft-quoted statistic that 80 per cent of Office users take advantage of 20 per cent of its features, and that, in many cases, makes any new feature that Microsoft can introduce to its Office product an even tougher sell.

Many people see an office suite as a tool to do a job, and little more than that. If it’s doing that job competently enough, then there’s little incentive to fork out on an upgrade programme.

Pros and cons

That’s not to say that Office 2010 doesn’t have some tangible advantages over it predecessors.

The Office market is, though, Microsoft’s to lose. Forrester estimates suggests that around 80 per cent of enterprise customers have one version or another of Microsoft Office running on their systems, and that level of usage does present a very big barrier to change.

But the figure to worry about, at least from a Microsoft standpoint, is the eight per cent using the assorted alternatives out there. It’s a fair bet that that number will be heading north throughout 2010, no matter how strong the release of Office 2010 turns out to be.

Along with Windows, Office is the product that Microsoft relies heavily on for much of its operating income, and the challenge it faces is parallel to that it’s fighting in the operating system market: persuading people they need an upgrade. The fact that around 40 per cent of Office users are on the 2007 edition, after all, tells its own story.

But Microsoft has been trying to get people to upgrade. The ribbon interface that Office 2007 shepherded in wasn’t met with universal liking, although many have plenty of nice things to say about it.

But it showed Microsoft stuck between boldly offering new features, and keeping existing users in a comfortable position to make an upgrade easier.

Office 2010 faces a similar challenge, although its collaborative features are already looking impressive. But will they fall into the 80 per cent of unused features? That’s hard to say, but you can’t rule the possibility out.

However, there’s also the small matter of Microsoft Web Apps, that sees the firm tackling cloud computing head on, and these too are heading to beta before the year is out.

Fabric

It’s often assumed, ultimately, that Office is somehow less stitched into the fabric of enterprise users than Windows. In reality, that’s not the case.

Granted, it may be easier to change office suite than operating system, yet the core problem is that Office file formats are so entwined in the vast majority of businesses that moving away from Office is a major operation in itself.

And stretched IT departments already have plenty on their plate without making their lives unnecessarily difficult for themselves.

Of course, that same argument applies to some extent to upgrades from previous iterations of Office, and thus Microsoft is set to face a sizeable challenge to convince enterprise clients that it’s worth their time and expense.

If, however, it can simply cement its market share, then in the current climate, and with one eye on the erosion of Internet Explorer’s position, Microsoft is likely to be more than happy. 2010 is certainly going to be an interesting year...

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