Suddenly Everyone Wants An Online Office Suite

from the how-to-compete? dept

Just a couple weeks ago, we noted that both Google and IBM were coming out with free products that competed with Microsoft's dominant office suite offering, noting that it was looking increasingly like Microsoft supposed monopolistic domination of the space might not be as strong as some (i.e., European regulators) believed. It certainly looks like more companies smell blood in the water. Adobe has now announced that it has purchased Virtual Ubiquity, makers of an online word processor called Buzzword, just to throw some more well-backed competition into the space. Of course, at some point, you have to wonder how this market shakes out. Obviously, Microsoft is still dominant, but can that continue when it charges so much against free products? The real question, though, may be what everyone else in the market can do to compete. We recently had the Techdirt Insight Community tackle exactly that issue for a client, and the experts there came up with a few key areas that online office suite providers should specialize in to differentiate themselves from both Microsoft and Google in the space. We can't share that specific analysis, but if you're in that space and want the Community to help you craft a strategy to stand out and succeed, contact us.

In the meantime, while I can't reveal what they said, I can give you my own quick analysis for free. It's going to be very difficult for most of these online office suites to get much traction if they don't have a larger platform to plug into. Players like Zoho and Thinkfree are basically trying to build that platform from scratch, but they'll probably need to open up more to third party developers if they want to really gain traction. Google can succeed in the space, in part just by being Google -- but also as it continues to integrate its office suite offerings into other parts of Google. If and when Google finally does realize that it's become a platform play, then perhaps they'll open up the ability to develop apps on top of Google's office apps as well. On Adobe's side, they're trying to build this platform, but it's unclear how much adoption it's really getting or how well they'll be able to integrate this new purchase into the platform play.

Filed Under: office suites, online
Companies: adobe, google, microsoft

Microsoft's Tough Night: Google And IBM Both Launch Free Office Products

from the on-your-toes... dept

Just about 24 hours after continued to insist that Microsoft is a monopoly that needs to be restricted, three major tech companies demonstrated why that might not be the case. First up, Google rolled out their long awaited presentations capabilities to Google Docs. Google continues to insist that this is merely a "feature" added to the Google Docs offering, but obviously, this is a light version of PowerPoint. Still, Google seems to recognize that this isn't a full featured offering just yet, and the announcement plays up the biggest strength of Google Docs that can't be matched by Microsoft's Office Suite: the real-time collaboration ability. That's what made the original Writely so useful, and Google seems to recognize that and know to focus on it. My quick test of the software suggests that it works pretty much exactly as you'd expect it to -- which means it's quite simple to pick up and use.

While the Google announcement may be more important long-term, it's also worth noting IBM's decision to offer a free downloadable office suite. Way back when, IBM bought Lotus and tried to compete with Microsoft in the online collaboration, email and office suite arena -- and pretty much failed miserably. Sure, there were an awful lot of legacy customers (especially on things like Notes) who kept sending cash to feed the cash cow, but it was clear many years ago that the offering was losing to Microsoft. In recent years, there's been a new interest in office suite applications with the various online offerings from the likes of ThinkFree, Zoho and Google -- as well as via the open source desktop office suite client OpenOffice (and Sun's StarOffice variant). Last week, IBM threw its support behind OpenOffice, and the new free "Lotus Symphony" suite is going to be based on that platform. This could lead to two important things. First, if IBM dedicates increased resources to improving OpenOffice, it can become an even stronger competitor to Microsoft's office suite (and it's already pretty strong) -- similar to the way that IBM added some heft to Linux. However, more importantly, the IBM brand name is likely to go a lot further in enterprises than OpenOffice (or even Sun's StarOffice).

Finally, as we've already discussed, Yahoo's Zimbra purchase gives it a path into enterprise collaboration software as well. If you're Microsoft right now, it would seem you have pretty good evidence that a strong market position is no guarantee of keeping competitors out of the market.

Filed Under: competition, free, office suites
Companies: google, ibm, microsoft