Office as Platform: One, More, Time

David Card | August 16, 2004, 08:19 AM

Since I took my own colleagues to task for it, I can't do any less for my favorite whipping boy, the NY Times. (You only hurt the ones you love.) The Times seems to think that MSFT's nth attempt to position Office as a collaboration platform is something new:

"But for Microsoft, which is starting to see its growth slow as it ages, reinventing that suite of old reliables - including Word, Excel and PowerPoint - has become nothing less than a key to its future....With that focus, Microsoft is now pursuing a strategy to transform Office from a bundle of programs on personal computers into a family of software that can put Microsoft's technology deeper into the operations of corporate data centers."

Folks, Mr. Softee does this with every Office release.

If the new strategy - which, as it has always been, is correct if perhaps unachievable - doesn't involve either:

- huge improvement in UI
- critical mass of another platform technology (XML? Web Services? Not yet, I don't think)
- dramatic price/cost improvements

don't pay it too much attention.