Microsoft Office Web Apps: I’m Becoming a Believer

In a little over a month, Microsoft will release Office 2010 and SharePoint 2010. As a part of Office, Microsoft will offer a suite of Office Web Apps—Excel, PowerPoint, Word, and OneNote--that will compete directly with Google Apps. This will be Microsoft’s official “cloud” browser-based application strategy, one that industry observers expect to stop Google’s threat to Office. I don’t know about that. If you’re like me and you’ve been using the Office Live Workspace beta, you know how clunky it behaves. You can upload documents with no problem, but when you try to edit documents, it’s hit-or-miss. However, after using the new Office Web Apps beta (except for Word--its editing capabilities aren’t working yet), it’s been a welcomed change to be able to create, edit, and save documents right online—just like Google Apps.

I assume to keep customers from defecting, Microsoft will make a strong push to get customers to upgrade to the 2010 versions of its client- and server-side Office products sooner rather than later. (Microsoft doesn’t want a repeat of the slow adoption rate of Office 2007.) I’ve read, for example, gaining access to the browser-based versions of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint will require users to have access to SharePoint 2010 and a license to Microsoft Office 2010. To respond to Microsoft’s challenge, can we expect Google to release its own improvements to Google Apps?

To date, Google's approach has relied on promoting what it considers a superior user experience. Who can argue with that? "We want to spoil people like heck in their personal lives, and then when they go to work, they should be asking the question, 'Why are things so hard?'" explained Bradley Horowitz, VP of product management. I’m guessing that by “superior,” Google means speed and simplicity. Speed remains a top priority across Google's product line.

One of the strong suits of Google Apps is real-time collaboration in the Web browser. Microsoft is bringing similar functionality and calling it “co-authoring.” What's not clear, however, is how exactly co-authoring works. Microsoft says you must save a document to a SharePoint server or a Windows Live site before you can collaborate, but the company doesn't say whether you can work together on a document right from the Web browser or if you need to use the desktop version. It's also not clear whether co-authoring works only on a private network, or if you can collaborate via the Web.

Microsoft will offer two versions of Office Web Apps: one version for home and school and another version for organizations and business users. The version for home users (as well as students and small businesses) will allow you to work from virtually anywhere with the familiar Office functionality. If you have an internet connection, you can access, edit, and share documents easily. You will also be able to store them to SkyDrive, which is free online storage that Microsoft provides as part of Windows Live, using your Windows Live ID. I don’t know if Office Live Workspace will go away and Microsoft will promote SkyDrive after the release of Office Web Apps, but SkyDrive already provides secure online access to stored documents, and allows you to edit them.

The version for business users will enable you to stay connected to your work over the Web. Even when you’re working away from the office, you’ll still have online access to your work and a core set of Office functionality. You’ll be able to post your work on SharePoint 2010 and edit, save, and share your work with others across the organization. The good news about both versions of Office Web Apps is the file formats are based on Office 2007 (just like Office 2010), so you can continue to work on documents that you created and saved in earlier versions of Office. The only exception will be OneNote. The new version uses a file format that is only compatible with Office 2010.

We’ll have to wait and see if you can save your Office Web Apps to SharePoint Workspace. (Remember Groove? It’s now called SharePoint Workspace.) For IT professionals, the convenience of being able to access documents from practically anywhere, whether on your PC or smartphone, will provide a tremendous boost to productivity.