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If you think OpenOffice is a competitor to MS Office 2010, think again

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Target:
Perhaps it depends on the industry on whether the need for heavy desktop suites will thrive, no doubt for spreadsheet use at the least. But since most business "documents" (I use that term very loosely) are simple communications, i.e., simple shared documents, you'll likely see the likes of Google Docs, Zoho, and Office Live rise as mobile/tablet computing becomes more prevalent
-zridling (June 17, 2010, 05:49 PM)
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could be, but for businesses (especially big businesses) at fixed sites the cost of bandwidth just to process their documentation (be that word processing, spreadsheeting, or data base applications) could well be prohibitive

also worth noting that potential privacy issues aside, that sort of bandwidth is available to everyone

40hz:
Of course there's nothing stopping Microsift from doing a version of Office Live to run on a customer owned server (or cloud) rather than their own. That would solve company security and availability issues, eliminate the need for 'thin' client solutions, and still give Microsoft the topside control it's looking for.

The best approach for that would be to sell a turnkey hardware/software combo with a managed "push" type subscription plan. Microsoft could then handle updates and security without the customer needing to worry about it. Plug it in, boot it up, and let your employees get to work. All your data stays local so no worries there. And bandwidth is only limited by the speed of the internal network since nothing is going out on the WAN end.  

Icing on the cake would be if you could have it automatically mirror data somewhere - and have the applications automatically failover to Microsoft's cloud and use that mirrored data should the customer's own server go down.

Talk about 100% uptime!  

Seems like a plan.  

CWuestefeld:
The best approach for that would be to sell a turnkey hardware/software combo
-40hz (June 17, 2010, 08:53 PM)
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I really don't think so. Dedicated hardware for servers is on the way out, except for very specialized applications like super DB servers. These days, everything is about virtualization.

Josh:
Microsoft office is already terminal server compatible (Install on server, run on client on demand). Has been since O2K.

40hz:
^ I was envisioning this more as a service rather than a software product. I also assumed Microsoft wouldn't be too gung-ho on releasing the binaries for Live. Installing on hardware, which could be provided as part of the subscription (much like sat/cable boxes) allows Microsoft to retain full control of the product, yet still address the client's desire to keep their data local.

You could also do it using a virtual approach. But that would mean installing on a server Microsoft didn't have complete control over.

Much as I personally like the notion of virtual (job security!), I'm still not 100% convinced it's the all-inclusive 'optimal solution for everything' that some of it's advocates are making it out to be. Part of that probably stems from the fact I go back to mainframes where everything basically was virtual.

It wasn't a panacea back then. And I doubt it's going to be one now.

But I could be wrong!  ;D

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