I run a software startup called oneDrum. We provide a real-time platform that makes existing desktop applications collaborative. Initially we're targeting Microsoft Office, but later in the year we'll offer an SDK for anyone to use.

I have a girlfriend (Sarah), a 4-year old son (Zac) and a 2-year old daughter called Stella.

I'll be using my blog to talk about oneDrum, the family, and random musings on politics, technology and music.

A perspective on MS Office 2010

This week Microsoft started talking more about its Office 2010 release, specifically, changes to the desktop application, a new web-based version, and support for each in SharePoint. Since this impacts us at oneDrum, I’ve spent some time trying to understand what is coming.

Before I layout my perspective, let me first say that although I talk to the MS guys and had some visibility of what is coming, I have not seen an actual demo; this perspective is constructed from those conversations and reading the perspectives of other on the web who either speak to MS as well, or have access to the technical preview. That technical preview may yet change in significant ways, and the online version will not be available for another month.

The wisdom of the blogosphere holds that Google Docs and other browser-based applications are the future, and Microsoft Office is the past.

I never held to this because:

  • Many, perhaps most, businesses hold a significant portion of their assets in MS Office.
  • The ecosystem surrounding and supporting MS Office is a critical feature of the landscape (note that Google is attempting to replicate this ecosystem in order to drive Google Docs adoption e.g. through its development of resellers).
  • The experience of browser based applications remains too bound to being online.
  • The experience of using javascript applications remains weak compared to desktop applications.
  • There are concerns surrounding the security and compliance of cloud-based tools. I have spoken to at least one major investment bank that has appraised Google Docs for collaboration with customers and outlying offices, but couldn’t reconcile their concerns.

Nevertheless, this is an extremely partisan arena (very few comments attached to articles below were neutral). But the Internet has been extremely quiet in response to the Office 2010 announcements relative to (the, perceived by some, competitor) Google Wave. The latter overwhelmed my RSS reader for weeks, while 2010 quieted down after a day. This is despite the fact that Office is a critical tool in many peoples lives, while only six people and their dog have ever used Wave. This might be because of any of the following:

  • The blogosphere is populated by early adopters and freelancers predisposed towards new products and approaches.
  • Office 2010 is another iteration, whereas Google Wave is new and shiny.
  • Google Wave addresses a set of problems that engages audiences more readily.

What is coming in MS Office 2010

There are three categories of offering in MS Office 2010:

  1. A new iteration of the desktop product:

    ~ The bulk of the changes seem iterative (e.g. consistent use of Ribbon interface, faster start up times).

    ~ A new feature called backstage that holds meta data (e.g. permissions, versions). More on backstage below.

    ~ Better support for collaboration when used in tandem with MS SharePoint (see below).

  2. A free web-based version of Office. As I understand it, this is an entirely new offering and they have dropped Office Live Workspace. This product will:

    ~ Provide a subset of the features in the desktop version.

    ~ Support simultaneous authoring.

    ~ Be free and advertising supported, or…

    ~ Be free and self-hosted for Enterprises using volume licensing for the desktop edition.

  3. Changes to SharePoint and associated offerings (e.g. MS Live Communications Server) that improve collaboration across Microsoft’s suite of tools.

    ~ SharePoint Workspaces (the incorporation and renaming of Groove). From what I know of Groove, and what I’d been told by the SharePoint team, I struggled to understand what’s on offer here. I watched the video three times and came to the conclusion – nothing. Maybe they just found it difficult to video simultaneous authoring.

    ~ Support for presence (e.g. Jasper is working here right now) and fine-grained locking (Jasper has locked this paragraph).

    ~ In document change notifications with synchronization options; this is the bit I understand least and struggled to find information on.

Taken together I think that Microsoft’s strategy is pretty clear:

  1. A free advertising based model for the bottom end to compete with Google Docs and OpenOffice.
  2. Nothing but iterative improvements for the home, freelancer and small business market.
  3. A better story for the medium to large enterprise looking for better collaboration tools and attracted to (but dissatisfied with) Google Docs

The opportunity for oneDrum

All this leaves a great opportunity for oneDrum.

Firstly, Office 2010 is a response to, and continuation of, fragmentation in the office tools market where players include, MS Office 2003, MS Office 2007, MS Office 2010, OpenOffice, GoogleDocs, Zoho and Lotus Symphony. We believe that in time, oneDrum can provide a unifying collaboration experience across these tools.

Secondly, it is confirmation that collaboration is a (the?) critical driver in software for the foreseeable future.

Thirdly, I do not believe that Microsoft has cracked collaboration with Office 2010, specifically:

  • Simultaneous authoring from the desktop application seems limited.
  • The majority of Office users (pre 2010) won’t even have this.
  • The collaboration tools remain reasonably basic (presence, chat and synchronization), but fixing collaboration is about blurring the lines between goal setting (the conversation) and the output (document). Potentially, Backstage could begin to address this – it is certainly the most intriguing aspect of the forthcoming release as it is extensible by partners to encompass, for example, context and workflow.
  • Collaboration across organizations is badly broken and nothing in this release addresses this. Fundamentally, we believe that the corporate model of collaboration that SharePoint embodies is broken and that collaboration tools need to be built around people, not organizations. I have been told by Microsoft’s employees inside the Office Server Group that although SharePoint is selling very well, the conversion rate into deployments is very poor.

Lastly, I don’t believe people want point solutions - even for tools as central as MS Office; they want a single experience regardless of the tool. It is this need that has made email the de facto and ubiquitous collaboration tool.

Final Thoughts

Everyone’s take on Office 2010 will turn on the question they think it is intended to address: Can it help Office remain relevant? Can it fix collaboration? Who is it for? These questions are lines in a battle that will play out over 5 years.

Some people believe the competitor will be Google Wave. I don’t as it happens but, taken together, one can see a clear set of trends emerging:

  • Unified communications around documents.
  • The acknowledgement of the importance of context in collaboration (look, I did something, and that something is here and I did it in response to…).
  • Simultaneous authoring.
  • Support for multiple entry points to my documents.

These are all things oneDrum believes, and we think we’ve got the only story that takes users from where they are today to where they want to be.

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