Okay, being honest, Microsoft’s decision to rebrand Office into the overall less recognizable Microsoft 365 is not that much of a deal. And it’s not like Microsoft is immediately changing their paradigm to the dreaded SaaS hellscape that makes them so much money from enterprise, at least for now. Microsoft has committed to one more version of the perpetual license Office; guaranteed to go the way that Adobe CS6 products did once Adobe made their deal with the devil. And, being real, tech people will keep calling it office and non-tech people will keep calling it “The [Word/Excel/Powerpoint/Email]”.
However, it does speak about what Microsoft is attempting to do.
Manu’s excellent comic about the orginzational charts of tech companies has existed for about a decade now, but it hasn’t lost its accuracy. Well, okay, Facebook lacks a couple more sub-webs, but that’s not important. Microsoft’s businessns decisions are. It seems they’re realizing that being at each other’s throats is not working. They won’t attempt another Longhorn unless they absolutely need to. (one may argue that their attempts at Windows on ARM make it clear that they do) Instead, they’ll focus on leveraging their existing products towards conversions for Azure and other subscription-based products…
…and damn anyone who doesn’t agree.
Unifying their branding on 365 makes sense. Sysadmins now understand it (in as much as it can be understood). And, much like Adobe realized, businesses all around the world need office suites. What are they going to do? Switch to a competitor?
Well, hopefully. There’s no better incentive for competitors to evolve than the incumbent with the giant market share getting lazy and deciding they want more money for little R&D and even less effort. Ask the American Auto Industry. Or Adobe, where now you can live a long and fulfilling creative life without touching a single Adobe product.
It will take a while though. The landscape for alternative office apps is not particularly rosy at the moment. OpenOffice is still under the grasp of Oracle (see chart), and LibreOffice has that open-source issue of being magnificently developed, unsurprisingly robust, and horrendously clunky as far as UI is concerned. And any questions regarding a UI update will descend into arguments about whether to QT6 or not long after the eyes of the normal consumer have glazed over.
iWork will do in a pinch if you have a Mac. So will Google Apps if you don’t feel as strongly about SaaS or privacy. From there it’s the wildland with a load of office suites fighting for a tiny slice of the market. I guess I should be thankful for their development, but I can’t help but feel a little bit sorry for their developers. Much in the same way that I wonder about the developers of the off-brand sodas sometimes?
Me? I’m set up. The perpetual version of Office 2022 sits happily in my computer asking for nothing more than the occasional update. I shall use it until it’s no longer compatible with anything. Or maybe a little bit earlier. After all, I’ve already shunned Word for a selection of Markdown Editors.
