MS Planning Free Web-Based Business Software

nieske writes "In response to Google Apps for Your Domain, Microsoft is also planning to release free web-based business software. The software will be ad-supported, but a paid, ad-free version will also be available. From the article: 'Revenue from software licenses for Office and the Windows operating system accounts for a bulk of Microsoft revenues. The challenge for Microsoft will be to make sure a free or, possibly, a subscription-supported version of Works won't hurt sales of its dominant Office software, which accounted for a quarter of the company's $44 billion in sales last year.' Would you choose an ad-supported online version of Microsoft Office over other free options like OpenOffice or Google Apps for Your Domain?"

I clicked on google.com/a

[crazyjeremy]

I'm glad this article came out... It provided me a link to google so I could experiment with their apps on my domain. I've been meaning to do it, but I never got around to it...

I wonder how many other people that didn't know about google's services, or just haven't gotten around to signing up WILL sign up because this M$ article reminded them to do so.

Functionability.

[mikesd81]

The question is what are the functions that will be offered? Will you be able to make big posters in the document program or make a chart a different sheet in the worksheet? Another question is how obtrusive will the ads be? Security is also a concern. If you can just logon to the internet and use a p/l to access the data, it's even easier to leak information by just giving out the information. I think I'll stick to in house operations where I can limit folders to certaion people only and such.

In beta now

[Grant,thompson]

A coworker of mine is in the closed beta program for the online office applications. He says it is pretty slick. So, I would say they really are planning, instead of just 'mulling'.

You'd imagine that, wouldn't you?

[kahei]

Yes, there are many many large institutions that can't do without Excel, because there simply isn't another product that can do what it does. I've been struck how over the many large sites I've visited, the one invariant is Excel -- can't do finance without it.

However, I think you'll find that on slashdot the replies will divide into:

1 -- Check out OO.o. It does what Excel does.
2 -- LOLz0rZ u use Ex-Hell!!!1! U shld get a real db like MySQL!!1!! ...which I think says something about the difficulty of communicating requirements across different mindsets. Also, I guess it's easy to forget what a complicated and powerful environment Excel is; even understanding what people _need_ to do in it (over what OO.o does) is hard, I guess.

Re:Yes. I would choose MS over the others.

[aplusjimages]

Most businesses will keep using MS, but for home use I don't understand why more people use Open Office.

Re:Yes. I would choose MS over the others.

[JimDaGeek]

Well, the guy is right IMO. What bank do you work for? I want to make sure they never have any of my money.

I work for a fortune 500. Our financial analysts use Excel to do things and they can do their little VBA stuff if they know it. However, if the excel spreadsheet starts to become complicated, a project is usually opened to let a real programmer like me, create a real program. All the important financial data stays in a real database and then depending on how complicated the interface/calculations are, I would create either a web-based app or a fat gui app. This approach scales the best and is the most flexible allowing the interface to be PHP, ASP.Net, C# Windows.Forms, Java, etc. The admins don't have to worry about VBA macro-viruses, lost spreadsheets, corrupted spreadsheets, etc. Access controls can be applied to the data/application to be sox compliant. For example, all of our financial apps have the username/passowrd authenticated via Netegrity and then a DB lookup to see what rights, if any, the authenticated user has with the data/application.

There is no real way to secure an excel spreadsheet that is admin friendly. You could password protected it, but if that password is forgotten, oops, bye-bye data. If the someone takes home an excel spreadsheet with sensitive financial data and they get cracked, opps! Maybe they take home that spreadsheet make important changes and then lose the spreadsheet or have a hard drive crash, opps!

Real companies hire real programmers to create real applications that are administered, protected and backed up by real sys admins. Allowing a non-IT financial business person to have that much control over financial data at any company, especially an INVESTMENT BANK, is just crazy. And people wonder how customers data gets exposed all the time.

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

Slashdot likes competition as long as the competition isn't named Microsoft.

Bah. It's a pretty broad spread at this point.

I hate MS and Linux; but it kills me that more /. people aren't immune to Google, with their little "do no evil" honor system. If you asked me who was creating your biography behind your back, I wouldn't say "Microsoft"...

As long as MS is an active force against Google, they're more good than bad in my mind.

Re:I clicked on google.com/a

[FesterDaFelcher]

How often is this the case nowadays? If you've had 5 minutes of downtime in the last month, I'd be surprised. If you've had even 1 hour of downtime in the last 6 months you need to look into other options.