Forrester: Microsoft Office is in no danger from competition

While Microsoft does have an iron grip on the desktop, it's still an open question as to whether they can hang onto that monopoly base as they make the great transition to the Web. In some ways this question comes down to whether of not Google (and other competitors like IBM, Novell, SalesForce .com, Oracle, Yahoo and Cisco) can replace Microsoft on the desktop before Microsoft succeeds in replacing or challenging their server systems. There is however another threat Microsoft must consider; efforts to re-purpose MSOffice to OpenWeb servers and systems.

Although the "replace MSOffice on the desktop" efforts gets all the ink, there are actually two approaches to cracking the MSOffice desktop monopoly problem to consider; replace or re-purpose.

Among the most prominent of replacement efforts are the cross-platform variations of the OSS OpenOffice.org desktop office suite code base. With a feature set comparable to MSOffice, WordPerfect Office and Lotus SmartSuite, OpenOffice introduced truly cross-platform functionality. Replacement efforts, also known as "rip-out-and-replace", can be costly and disruptive. The reason is that years of integrated client/server - business systems development has bound these systems to the MSOffice productivity environment. Rip out MSOffice and you rip up much of your critical day-to-day business chores.

In fairness to the replacement crowd, it is true that many of these bound business processes are going to transition to or be re-written to the Web. The productivity advantages of Web based access, exchange, collaboration and communications are extraordinary. The question becomes, will these processes and systems transition to a MSOffice - MS WebStack/Cloud model? Or will they transition to an OpenDesktop - OpenWeb model? (Or other semi OpenWeb alternative?)

This is where the other option, re-purposing MSOffice come into play.

The re-purposing of MSOffice actually follows much the same patterns and methodologies used by Microsoft as they try to integrate and connect their proprietary WebStack/Cloud model. In fact, as Microsoft goes about the difficulties of makign this great transition, they actually expose many of the internals needed to similarly connect MSOffice to OpenWeb systems.

The advantage of re-purposing approaches is the same advantage Microsoft offers to businesses and organizations with workgroups and workflows bound to the MSOffice productivity environment. Web productivity, collaboration, communication, and connectivity technologies becomes a "value added" enhancement as opposed to "costly and disruptive" replacement/re-write.

Hope this helps. Watch the WebKit community because that's where most of this re-purposing to the OpenWeb is targeted. The reason? For re-purposing to succeed as an alternative to Microsoft's rich client - rich server" integrated desktop-device-Web-server platform, the OpenWeb must advance as rapidly as possible. The WebKit OSS Community is pushing the edge of the OpenWeb envelope like nothing else out there. And they have a very important cornerstone of extraordinary smart-device marketshare capable of stamping these much needed innovations into the life of the greater Web. This edge-of-the-web marketshare could effectively trump the foot-dragging, vendor consortia efforts to slow or impede OpenWeb standards development.

~ge~