There’s a huge chunk of the population (and a larger chunk of their customer base) that can’t/won’t run their world out of a hosted service that’s only available when they are connected.

Microsoft is only competing with themselves.

I think Microsoft just belongs to the past. Now it’s time for corporate people to realize that word documents, spreadsheets and presentations do not require fat clients anymore. Also to realize that web offerings already provide integrated business scenarios like never before, and that with little adoption it will go

I am an MS fan and I am not ashamed to admit it. Also, I don’t know what people get by bashing MS. It is like something which they do just for the sake of doing it.

How many guys like other Office Applications? (I am not saying that there are none, but seriously how many guys honestly think that non MS-Office Applications are better??) And how many guys have found Lotus Notes better than Microsoft Outlook. The OWA is a superb stuff as well!!! I have used both and I know how much it hurts when you see the Formatting getting lost in Non-MS-Outlook mails. I use Excel 2007, and I am so used to it, that may be I won’t even like to waste my time learning any other tool.

Bottomline is… you can’t make everyone happy and competetion is GOOD, IMHO!!!!

Aziz,

I’ve long been a believer in SaaS as a better model, and that’s what the article I quoted above in no. 41 is all about. Btw, it’s not simply my opinion, I’m quoting quite a few sources, some whom are decidedly MS-friendly. There’s a long string of arguments in that post, can’t recite them here.

When I am writing about Zoho specifically, like in this piece:
http://www.zoli.../9/2793286.html , I do disclose the advisory status.

I’ve retyped my answer twice, my comments don’t come through, have asked Mike to check…

BTW, my personal take on this .. MS will kick ass of other suites .. thats what they have done in the past, thats what they will do in the future!

Wow, I guess we should include Office 2007 itself in “everything else” . Here’s ZDNet on the subject:

“It’s astonishing that in the midst of a serious challenge from a new generation of Web-native office suites, Microsoft should give its rivals a helping hand by handicapping its own product so badly that it performs worse than an online product on a slow dial-up line.”

More details here.

Or that if it does, it will just be a design for features in office.

The right Microsoft strategy is to make multiple development bets and see what they need later.

I think with .net and ajax and WPF/E it could potentially be the winner because lets face it MS are known for Office and Google are not.

and yeah, if there is a area MS is absolute without parallel is Office, once you start using office 2007, everything else seems incredibly slow and outdated..