Objections to Office 2.0
Sunday, June 11th 2006 | Ismael Ghalimi
When a new thing comes out and threatens the positions of established players, objections are expressed, initially playing Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt (FUD) out. Counter-arguments are crafted, which then lead to more sophisticated objections. As the debate goes on, objections gain in maturity and start addressing real issues that need to be seriously considered by the promoters of the new thing. Of course, this is true for Office 2.0 as much as it is for anything else, and the debate is only six month old, so we’re still at the FUD stage. Among the objections listed on the Office 2.0 bug tracker, some are expressed more often than not. Here are my top 3 as of today.
Office 2.0 does not work when you are offline
This bug has been extensively discussed on IT|Redux over time, and the best answer I found was suggested by my friend Assaf: most office users are sitting at their desk and connected to the Internet when they happen to be using their office productivity suite. In other words, this problem does not really exist for the majority of users. And for people on the go such as you and me, it’s likely that we’ve figured out ways to remain connected most of the time when we need to. Next!
Office 2.0 applications have primitive feature sets
This one is absolutely valid, but the answer is a pretty simple one: who really needs more? And could the benefits of going 2.0 overcome the loss of some exotic features that end up being rarely used by most users? When you get this objection, just ask people to name the couple of features they cannot live without. In most instances, they’ll have a hard time answering, but when they do, point them to a couple of features that are unique to Office 2.0, and ask them to make an educated choice between the two options. More often than not, people will acknowledge the positive trade-off.
Office 2.0 does not protect my data
This one really is about FUD. As any security expert will tell you, most computer crimes are committed by insiders. Having your data on your desktop or laptop makes it a lot easier for them to get access to it than if it is stored on Google’s servers. And for individual users that are manipulating highly insensitive data such as little league schedules or diet records, the prospect of a hard drive failure or malignant virus infection is a lot worse than the one of having a Google employee peer over their data.
In about six months, I’ll update this list with the new FUD du jour.
UPDATE 6/14/2006: The good folks at Zoho wrote a similar post.
Entry filed under: Office 2.0
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Hi,
I hope you don’t mind my cross-posting this contribution to mydreamapp.com, a competition to design a new Mac killer app, where I introduce my idea for a STOD app : sync to on-demand. My Office 2.0 setup is built with the same services as yours, plus client applications on my Mac, which address the objections mentioned above.
Hope you like it,
-Rup
STOD is Sync to OnDemand
On-demand (hosted) web services are great: you may be using one professionnally, or may also be a Web 2.0 service-addict for your own personal use. They have numerous advantages: hosted, usually good or excellent availability, you always have the latest version, free or low monthly subscription, no installation on your site, no maintenance on your site, no hardware on your site, etc.
However, they do have their drawbacks :
- Online : you need to be online to use these services, except for those which offer a sync feature
- Performance (speed) : although it is usually very good for a web site, it is low compared to local client applications running on your own Mac
- Usability : although Web 2.0 has much improved user interaction possibilities with web sites (vs. HTML), you are still stuck in a very basic user interface limited by your browser(s) capabilities and the web-page concept; this is much, much less nice than your usual applications on your Mac.
So, just imagine if you could join the great advantages of on-demand services with the perfect (no less!) usability, power, beauty of your Mac desktop: you have a STOD application (sync to on-demand).
This is a sync engine which sucks the data from your favorite on-demand service(s) onto you personal Mac, syncs them with .Mac on the way to give you access from all your different home/work/play Macs. It is delivered with CRUDL (Create, Read, Update, Delete, Link) user-interface consoles tuned for the specific service you usually use online, but with the best design of a Mac user-interface. Imagine a Mac app designed like Delicious Library or iSale, but for your favorite on-demand web service!
Here is my rating for my idea vs. the MyDreamApp competition’s criteria:
A) Innovation and Creativity : ***** (5/5)
This has never been done. I have been waiting for this application for 2 years, and not seen anyone mention anything like it. That is why I have started prototyping it, spending most of my time looking out for the technologies (now available) to implement it with.
B) Use of OS X and Leopard technologies : ****. (4.5/5)
Integrated with many desktop Mac applictions, STOD applications will also rely on lower-level Tiger and Leopard technologies like Spotlight, CoreData, TimeMachine, etc.
C) Feasibility of Development : ****. (4.5/5)
This has already been prototyped — more in future posts
D) Mass-Market Appeal : ***** (5/5)
I hope STOD applications (for business on-demand services) will simply be the Trojan Horse we have been waiting for to introduce the Mac massively into the entreprise.
Look out for future posts detailing each feature.
Beyond bringing valuable on-demand services right to your Mac, the STOD concept is the door open to a stream of Mac applications working locally with seamlessly-synced business services data and, turns those service platforms into an extension of the Mac and its .Mac/iDisk sync model.
Rupert,
Very interesting! Thanks for sharing.
I hope you’ll be successful, for I know many Mac users who could use this.
Rupert,
We have developed a similar concept for the Windows platform and specifically for Word documents and Excel spreadsheets. Do take a look at the Live Documents website. Would love to connect directly to see if what you are conceptualizing for the Mac platform is congruent to our approach.
Cheers,
-Sumanth
Hi,
While I support Office 2.0, I do think that these objections should be taken far, far more seriously than they are taken here. While I’ll go along with you on the “offline” one, your response to the other two is inadequate, IMHO.
Primitive Feature Sets
While everyone knows that most people don’t use most of the features of rich applications like Microsoft Office, and users are often confused by complex applications, the problem is that the subset of useful features is different for each person. Since it is a royal pain if everyone in a company or workgroup doesn’t use the same tools, this naturally leads to choosing the most full featured one.
Attempts have been made in the past to create simple, trimmed-down applications, even by Microsoft, but they have failed fairly dramatically in the marketplace. They were tried in the mid- to late-90’s and fell flat. Microsoft’s response to this failure was to add interface features in Office that hid the more complex features until they were actually needed, thereby reducing the cognitive “footprint”.
Protect My Data
I believe the fear here is not one of invasion by outsiders. SaaS providers are likely to have much better security than the typical user. Instead, the problem is putting your data in the hands of others, and being subject to a variety of problems:
- The SaaS company may go out of business.
- The SaaS company’s employees may be careless. The current scandals in the federal government (lost laptops with private data) is enough to indicate a real problem.
- The SaaS company may be bought by another company and they discontinue the product.
While some of these issues can probably be addressed in Office 2.0, they should definitely be taken seriously.
Paul Topping
[…] What’s not working? Having 100 people and 45 demo pods connected to the Internet through one hotel connection while someone is trying to give a live demo is not a good idea. As was said before, Office 2.0 needs broadband connections to the Internet. If you’re offline, Office 2.0 does not work, period. This is one of the most popular objections to Office 2.0, but it’s also the easier to fix. All we have to do is wait. Within five years, anyone who will need or want to be connected will, anywhere in the world, at anytime, and at virtually no cost. If you do not believe me, try developing synchronization software that works, and let’s see who gets there first. And if you find yourself in a plane without any Internet connection, maybe it’s time for you to read a book or a magazine, or take a nap. Let’s get real: the need for high connectivity is an illusion. […]
Seems to me the biggest issue regarding Office 2.0 implementations is around managing enterprise data. Features and application access is one thing, but how does a company share, organize, and protect its information assets?
I don’t think that putting data out into third parties is going to solve this part of the problem. In fact, it seems like it would accelerate the duplication of information. Services like Plaxo and LinkedIn start to address sharing data, but not from an enterprise perspective.
Of course, dealing with enterprise data strategy is not as sexy as using the latest Google tools, but from a business priority standpoint, it seems equally critical as generating data.
So I guess it depends on who the real users of Office 2.0 will be. At this stage it seems to me to be mainly personal, home office, very small companies — less than 10 people, and students. And of course it’s interesting that the only company that seems to really know how to make money off this group is Google, by selling access to eyeballs.
Ismael,
Isn’t it time to update this list?
Your faithful human-CRON friend…
Roberto,
Yes, it is, as well as for many other past articles.
I will need to find some time for it.
Take care!
-Ismael
Good work in refuting the objections. My readers need to see this post. I will be recommending they come and have a look.
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