Microsoft: SaaS No Threat to MS Office - SaaS Week

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October 11, 2007
Microsoft: SaaS No Threat to MS Office

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer spoke recently at the Gartner Symposium in Orlando. Among other things, he commented on the trend toward SaaS, stating that the world is definitely moving in that direction but also that "you will never be able to do as good a job on Microsoft Office if it's just browser-based," according to a
PC World report.

It is true that offices that regularly use office applications and rely a lot on features will probably
not begin migrating en-masse to SaaS-based word processors or spreadsheets anytime soon, given that SaaS word processors generally don't hold a candle to MS Office in terms of features, but I wonder about offices that might use office applications only casually, such as to draft correspondence or office
memos. Small and medium businesses might theoretically benefit from moving at least some employees onto more scaled down office suites that run from a browser.

In other Microsoft news,
Mary Hayes Weier of InformationWeek commented recently that, although Microsoft is talking up its Online Services for Business, Microsoft's true SaaS play is really Titan, the code name for its Dynamics Live CRM. Weier stated that Microsoft probably envisions Titan becoming a serious competitor for Salesforce.com and possibly becoming the market leader. Of course, the truth of that effort will become apparent over time and Titan may indeed fizzle when it hits the market. But, as one commenter posted, Salesforce.com customers tend to be nearly as devoted to that company as open
source users are to Linux, so the idea of customers migrating en masse to Microsoft may be unlikely.