Microsoft Office Hits the Skids

From the Seattle P-I today...

Consumer versions of Office 2007 will be appropriately named, it turns out. Microsoft is postponing the retail release of the next version of its productivity software to January 2007, as noted in this morning's story about the Windows restructuring. The company says versions for businesses will be available in October through its volume-licensing program.

The move follows the decision to delay Windows Vista's retail release in the same way. See additional coverage by Reuters and CNet News.com.

Windows Vista Delay

Charles Cooper, over at C|Net, gets it right again...

In Microsoft's view, this is simply a decision to delay the ship date by a few weeks. But it's much more.

Time was when Microsoft could get away with a product slip, shrug its shoulders and promise a "new and improved" version sometime soon. Microsoft's OEMs (original equipment manufacturers) were banking on a big bang rollout in the fourth quarter. This extends throughout the PC food chain--from chipmakers to storage providers to applications developers and yes, computer manufacturers.

The new launch is now scheduled for January 2007. Microsoft is downplaying the slip, saying the extra time was needed to build better security into the product. That may be so, but this is Microsoft's biggest product launch in years. Considering the amount of resources being thrown at the Vista project, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates and CEO Steve Ballmer now face unyielding embarrassment. How could things go so wrong this late in the process? For years, Microsoft fought to shed a reputation for being perennially late shipping big projects like Windows and Windows NT. Tuesday's announcement only makes those questions front and center again.

Microsoft is downplaying suggestions that Tuesday's news suggests anything fundamentally wrong with the company's internal processes. Still, you have to ask whether the company has grown so large that its ability to undertake a project this complex is inevitably going to be hampered by its own bureaucratic sloth.

Recall that last year Microsoft dropped several important features in order to not slow down the shipment plans. Microsoft even removed WinFS, a key piece of Longhorn, so that PC makers could plan around a holiday release.
As with everything it does, Microsoft is careful to cultivate its public relations. Earlier in the day, the company announced it would increase the distribution of its Xbox 360 video game consoles. But that bit of good news will get overshadowed because Vista will miss the entire '06 holiday shopping season.

Beyond the obvious blow to its reputation, Microsoft's inability to tame Windows--always a notoriously hairy coding project--puts the company on the defensive at the worst possible juncture. Time was when Microsoft could get away with a product slip, shrug its shoulders and promise a "new and improved" version sometime soon. But that was pre-Internet, pre-Linux and pre-Google; 2006 is not 1996, and Microsoft's customers have other alternatives.

Web Tools - version 3.0 ?

After largely missing out on the ballyhooed Web 2.0 that spawned today's more interactive Web sites, Microsoft roared onto the scene Monday with a set of powerful new tools to build even jazzier sites that should start appearing in late 2006 and beyond.

Chairman Bill Gates and a bevy of executives presented the software and their vision for tomorrow's Web at an unusual event called Mix06, aimed primarily at the people who design, build and run the world's top 500 commercial Web sites.

The company simultaneously released a test version of the new Internet Explorer browser — most people's vehicle to the Web — and apologized for taking so long to produce a new version.

"In a sense, we're doing a mea culpa, saying we waited too long for a browser release," Gates said, then pledged to release the next two versions more rapidly.

The heavily technical conference is intended to get Web developers and companies excited about a wave of new products Microsoft plans to release over the next year, including Windows Vista, the updated Internet Explorer and a set of Web development tools.

Yet the conference is also a sort of coming out for Microsoft, a chance to explain how it's no longer as obsessed with the PC and now embraces the Internet as a platform for software development.

It's a tricky pitch. Microsoft is trying to embrace trends in Web development that move more computing online, while also telling developers that advanced Web pages will work best on a PC or device running Microsoft software.

"Part of our message here is the Internet's important — the experience in the Web browser — but don't underestimate the power of that PC," said Dean Hachamovitch, general manager of Internet Explorer.

"It's not like there's a browser world and a Windows world. It's 'How does the Web get better if I'm running on Windows?' "

Several developers attending the conference were enthusiastic about the technology, both for Web development and new display technologies in Windows.

"It's definitely the future, whether you call it Web 2.0 or whatever," said Loren Heiny, who develops Tablet PC software at Jumping Minds Software in Scottsdale, Ariz.

Web 2.0 is a term applied, primarily by software publisher and pundit Tim O'Reilly, to the post-bubble emergence of the Internet as a platform supporting Web sites that are more interactive, interconnected and service-oriented.

Microsoft brought O'Reilly on stage to interview Gates during his keynote Monday, and the two talked about the company's strategies and competition.

At one point, O'Reilly drew a grimace from Gates when he referred to Microsoft "cutting off the air supply" of browser pioneer Netscape by distributing Internet Explorer free. The tension released after Gates wisecracked about the historic '90s browser war.

"Actually they were giving it away," Gates said. "There's a lot of these so-called fights where the other guy really knocked himself out."

Earlier in Gates' keynote, companies such as MySpace and the BBC demonstrated how they're using Microsoft software to build features such as small gadgets that display updated information on a Vista desktop.

The BBC demonstrated how users will be able to search, browse, download and share its video and radio content.

Amazon.com already is using Microsoft tools to let customers subscribe to wish lists, so that they are notified when friends add an item to their list, for instance.

Yahoo! is offering a similar service for subscribing to its music hit list.

Sean Gerety, a developer at TSYS in Atlanta, said he'll use the Microsoft platform to create a Web application for banks that will enable customers to quickly search through thumbnail images of checks they have written.

THIS IS THE REAL STORY HERE... In some ways, Microsoft is playing catch-up. Adobe currently makes the leading Web-design and development tools, and there's a popular set of free, open-source Web technologies known as Ajax.

Microsoft is also adding features to Internet Explorer that have long been in competing browsers such as Firefox and Opera.

...........

"The real power of that whole platform is based on the Vista operating system, and it's going to take awhile; I'd say three to five years," said Richard Monson-Haefel, an analyst at Salt Lake City-based Burton Group and a former Java developer.

Bad Idea: Google to Buy Sun?

From the NY Times' "DealBook" today. I think this is a very bad idea -- any enterprise hardware company struggles with launching a physical platform and sustaining that in the marketplace. A "pure" software company like Google can, in some instances, turn on a dime when a "platform" or new idea doesn't quite catch fire. Sun cannot -- you're stuck with millions of dollars worth of product that you have to sell or get rid of somehow. After all, if Google Mars isn't a hit, no one really cares. But if Sun's new "Enterprise 5000z" servers are not a hit, it's a big blow to the bottom line. Sun is a hardware company -- that's how they make their money (like Apple) -- and Google has no business playing there. Okay, here's the story:

Talk of an imminent sale of Sun Microsystems to Google has been swirling around trading floors and Silicon Valley for more than a week. Shares of Sun, which has a partnership with Google to develop and distribute each other’s technology, spiked up about 4 percent last week as a result of the rumors. The speculation got even more legs after Google purchased Writely, a maker of a Web-based word processor that some people viewed as a product to be added to Sun’s StarOffice suite, which Google may help distribute. It’s also convenient that Eric Schmidt, Google’s chief executive, is the former chief technology officer of Sun.

However, according to people involved in the partnership,the speculation is unfounded — at least for now.

The better question then may be: should Google buy Sun? DealBook’s take: It clearly comes with a lot of baggage. Google might do better just picking off its different software platforms, like Java.

But here’s another view, from from Daniel M. Harrison’s blog:

Anyone who thinks Google can continue its phenomenal growth without a platform to combine hardware, storage, StarOffice, JAVA, and Solaris ought to think again — the combinations are the only competitive advantage that can enable them to trade at a P/E of 100 — and perhaps way above. Indeed, this was exactly what happened in 2000: too many technology companies relied purely on supposed revenues derived from ‘wandering customers’, rather than delivering the hard substance that drove the bottom line exterior to trends of marketing and advertising. Sun’s growth potential is what Google may well be looking to acquire — and that is largely stored in intellectual property, where Google hold their key competitive advantage: translating exactly this kind of property into cold cash.

Google Gets Into Office Space

By BLOOMBERG NEWS
Published: March 10, 2006

Google Inc. said yesterday that it had bought the Silicon Valley start-up Upstartle, gaining its Writely Internet word processing software. The terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Writely lets users compose documents on the Web and share them with others, according to notes on Google's Web site yesterday.

Upstartle released a test version of Writely software last August.

The acquisition puts Google in direct competition with Word software from Microsoft and signals the intention of Google to expand its reach into Microsoft products.

While Microsoft is already testing small-business software that is delivered over the Internet, the company is not offering word processing software that is delivered using the Web. Although they beta-tested it back in 1999... and I was there to see them decide that it would cannibalize Office, so they didn't launch it... shame, eh?