Office 2.0 is not about online spreadsheets!

This morning at the Office 2.0 Conference, I think I saw demos of at least four or five online web-based word processors and spreadsheets.  Eek.

I don’t think Office 2.0 is about displacing Microsoft Office on the desktop.  Let’s face it, folks – as much as we love to complain about it, Office is about to ship its 12.0 version – that’s a lot of evolution there.  It’s a very mature product, it works, and even a guy from Google this morning said if you want to build a financial model, you ought to be using Excel.

I just don’t see the incentive to have an online word processor or spreadsheet.  I mean, sure – the technology is cool.  Who doesn’t love seeing super ajaxy applications?  But at the end of the day, these standard office applications (Word, Excel, Powerpoint, etc) work great on my desktop.  Even when google.com is down (amusing anecdote – gmail was down for a minute this morning during a demo, much to the chuckle of the audience).  Even when I’m on a plane.  Even when I’m on an island with no cell service.  They just work.

But that’s ok – because replacing desktop applications is NOT what Office 2.0 is about.

It’s about Collaboration.  Community.  Sharing.  Give me better ways to work on something with a team.  Give me ways to take my Word document and collaborate on it.  Give me ways to distribute content widely within my organization.  Give me ways to generate content myself within my company – and give us ways to have a conversation about it.  Give me ways to tear down the walls between parts of my company, and get everyone working better together.

GIve me desktop applications that use the power of the network to deliver a better experience…but still work fine without the network.

Give me Web 2.0 – inside my firewall.

And don’t take away Excel.  It works fine.  Even on a plane.

7 thoughts on “Office 2.0 is not about online spreadsheets!

  1. Doug Ransom

    “Who doesn’t love seeing super ajaxy applications? ”

    People who aren’t coders. AJAX is a fine technology to deliver a substandard user experience as an alternative to no user experience at all when:

    – users are away from their own computing environment

    – their computing environment is restricted.

    Programmers like ajax. Users prefer rich apps. That is why they fork out additional cash over their newsgator subscribtions to buy NetNewsWire.

    Kudos to Microsoft for inventing AJAX (if not the acronym) to solve some specific problems — but AJAX is a workaround around restrictive computing environments.

    Reply
  2. Yori Nelken

    Couldn’t agree more. And talking about airplanes and offline – Boeing announced it is scrapping its in-flight high speed broadband service because of lack of interest from leading airlines. We are moving backwards at this point :-(

    Reply
  3. stephen o'grady

    “I just don’t see the incentive to have an online word processor or spreadsheet.”

    “But that’s ok – because replacing desktop applications is NOT what Office 2.0 is about.

    It’s about Collaboration. Community. Sharing. Give me better ways to work on something with a team.”

    what if you wanted to collaborate on a spreadsheet with a team?

    you’re right that it’s not about replacing Office – it’s great for a specific set of tasks.

    but that doesn’t mean that online documents and spreadsheets are not equally perfect for a different set of tasks.

    Reply
  4. Gordon Montgomery

    Maybe there is a hybrid solution out there that will work on my desktop on the few occasions when I really have no internet access and really want to do something in excel and then it would sync back up to my web version when I’m back within 100 feet of a wireless connection…like in Ghana for example…(meaning: more of the world is getting connected wirelessly than us here in the ‘developed’ western world)

    Reply

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