Tag Archives: Microsoft Office
Microsoft Office To Offer Support For Chrome
Posted on 24. May, 2011 by Nicholas Greene. 
15 Comments
This June, Microsoft is releasing its first service pack for Microsoft Office 2010. With this update, Microsoft Office will for the first time offer support for Google Chrome, allowing Chrome to run the suite’s online applications using SharePoint 2010. Originally, Microsoft had limited support to IE, Firefox and Safari. There wasn’t really any reason given for this, and with a little tweaking and the use of Skydrive, the apps ran just fine within Chrome. So why the sudden change of heart?
Apparently, they’re not telling. They haven’t said anything about why they didn’t originally include support or why they’ve decided to add it now.
The former could have something to do with the rivalry between the two companies. For the past year or so, they’ve been slinging mud at one another over their online applications. Microsoft recognizes that Chrome is a rival to Microsoft’s Internet Explorer- and a very significant one at that. The battle kicked off in May 2010 when Google’s Enterprise product management director Matthew Glotzbach encouraged users and companies to forget about upgrading to Office 2010 and instead add Google Docs, claiming “it makes Office 2003 and 2007 better”.
In addition to adding support for Chrome, Microsoft is including the usual array of security and hotfix patches, printing support for the Word webapp, support for IE9 and the ability to insert charts into the Excel app. Other than these tidbits Microsoft hasn’t really given us a whole lot of information on what else these new features and improvements are going to entail, so I suppose we’re just going to have to wait and see. All they’ve told us on the matter is that users can now do things that they were unable to do before. Yeah…kind of vague, isn’t it?
thechromesource Daily: Links for 6/29/10
Posted on 29. Jun, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey. 0 Comments
The folks on the Chromium project are serious about browser security, turning their focus now to extensions.
Will the rival service to Facebook, which may or may not be called Google Me, look anything like Orkut?
Google Apps for Education is proving to be successful; students may soon be spending more time with this than Microsoft Office.
It really not likely that Google would ever completely shut down their operations in China, they will just be patient.
HTML5 means speed: A Google staff engineer recently said they plan to use the technology so that Gmail loads in one second.
thechromesource Daily: Links for 6/8/10
Posted on 08. Jun, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey. 0 Comments
Can Chrome OS succeed without launching a tablet device for the market?
Google released some updates for the Chrome browser today on Mac, Linux and Windows.
A new and improved way that Google does its search indexing, called Caffeine has just been launched today.
Microsoft is working on their Google Docs strategy by offering up the free Office Web Apps, a browser version of Office.
Google Chrome Frame, an extension for Internet Explorer to give it Chrome-like features, is now in beta.
What It’s Like to be a Successful Google Apps Software Company
Posted on 08. May, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey. 2 Comments
MindMeister is a company that provides a special tool for organizations called “mind mapping”. Being a software as a service company, it was logical for them to be included when the Google enterprise Apps Marketplace when it was launched last March. In this interview, I talk with MindMeister COO Michael Hollauf and CTO Till Vollmer about their software, the recent changes Google has made to Apps as well as what it’s like working with the search engine giant.
Can you tell me a little bit about MindMeister?
Michael: We’ve been online for about 3 years now. About a month ago, finally, we launched on Google Apps Marketplace. This came out of a relationship with Google. It started pretty early on, almost three years ago now. We realized the product we have fits nicely with what Google has.
It’s a nice add-on for their Apps. I’m explaining more our relationship with Google. Since our integration, we are doing more things integrated with the Docs. We have a regular relationship with them. It seems they’re really pushing Apps now with the introduction of the Marketplace and the enhancements to Google Docs.
Would you say your product is similar to something you would do in Visio or is it something out on its own?
Michael: Yes, it’s certainly something that’s on its own. Visio is something that can draw everything. You can draw pictures, flow charts. I think we’re a subset. We focus on a subset of what Visio does. We are very good at that. Our software basically gives it all, focuses very quickly and doesn’t worry about the drawings, it just brings in all of your structures.
So, I think someone that uses our mind mapping product wouldn’t be very happy with Visio. More similar to drawing in a PowerPoint presentation, something like that. It’s a similar space though. We often get requests for things like flow charts and so on. It’s all graphical, visual presentation. They have something in Docs which is now called Google Drawings with a separate bar.
Is this just something that is part of the Apps marketplace? I assume that your pricing model is set up so it’s a monthly user fee or something? Anything of that nature?
Michael: Yes, it’s a monthly user fee. It’s a monthly fee per user or teams of users so you can have two people up to however many you want. You can pay by the month or can pay by the year. The way it works in Google Apps is they don’t have a billing infrastructure. So the way we do it, we let users sign up for free without even entering their credit cards. They just go to MindMeister in Apps and get a 30 day free trial.
If you want to upgrade, you can pay and purchase. That’s going to be the way it works until we launch billing. According to Google, it should be in a couple of months when the users will only use their credit card once – when they sign up to Google Apps. Then they will be able to do everything at the Apps Marketplace: just add the app.
Better for us and better for users. They don’t want to enter their credit cards more than they have to.
I think that’s a fantastic idea. What are they getting out of setting up all of this entire infrastructure? Is it just that they’re getting the value of added features to Apps?
Michael: Yes, now that’s the only thing they are getting, but with the billing, they are going to take twenty percent I think it is.
Twenty percent of everything then?
Michael: Yes.
I ask these things because Eric Schmidt keeps talking about how a lot of revenue is going to start to come from this. There really hasn’t been an explanation, but that right there, when you’re dealing with percentage of fees per month that really adds up. What they’re trying to do is get away from just advertising because you really have to diversify when you’re a company that large.
Michael: They still do 97% (something like that) or 95% just with advertising. So, they are searching for other ways for (revenue).
A few weeks ago there was an announcement that went out relating to some changes they’re doing (which included no longer supporting Gears).Is it just Docs? Maybe you guys could talk a little about that.
Michael: It was just Docs with their announcement. We’ve had to find all sorts of explanations and guidelines for our users (about Gears). It works fine for older ones; it’s just not supporting the new ones. Now I think of all of the programs and suppliers will have to do the same thing. A lot of people use it and I think if everyone is persistent, it will send out messages that it (will not be) working anymore.
It seems a little strange to me because you’d think they’d have a solution ready to go.
Michael: Our users I think, it used to work better (same with all browsers, even Firefox). It doesn’t support it anymore and you can’t even install it anymore. There are other features as well.
Till: Obviously the drawing is one of the things that are new. There are a couple of changes to things, and the API as well. The big thing was the drawing actually.
Michael: I think there is one thing talked about that real time is not being liberated enough. With this EtherPad, a document could be worked on (with others) at the same time. You could do things in real time. Like when you typed in the character, it would show up on the other person’s screen like in the same second. The real time collaboration, I think that’s what’s built into Docs now.
Well, that’s great. Could you tell me the name of that company again? I’ve never heard of this before.
Michael: Etherpad. I think it was two or three Google employees a year ago when they started that company.
It sounds like they’re trying to make collaboration better but at the same time, the offline access (via Gears) thing is a little distressing especially when you’re thinking about moving everything to the cloud, it seems there’s going to be some sort of solution through HTML5, right?
Michael: There’s an issue, yeah. I mean real time, I didn’t see anything about that in HTML5. Is it http or something? Or some offline mode supported in HTML5?
So, they’re going to use HTML5 for that? I don’t think they have a choice, if you lose that functionality it just seems like a really bad idea. I think the cloud is a great thing but, what happens when you make these kind of changes? And I just don’t know what kind of solution it’s going to be that all these companies now have to make all of these changes?
Michael: That’s because all of us use these, really out of necessity. This is something that could happen with Flash, I don’t know. Now we have to wait. It’s not a great situation but the market shows it’s a young market and technology is new. Otherwise, this is “growing pains”, I would say.
It’s just to be so disruptive in so many areas that they’re starting to do these types of things, to be honest with you. It’s just I hear a lot about all of the benefits but I think what most people are concerned about where this is going. The idea I think, when they started this was to compete with Microsoft but now it doesn’t seem like that what they want to do. Instead, it’s to be a compliment to that. Although I do think their solution is better.
Michael: I think in our discussions they never admit Microsoft is an issue for them. They’re more like “we’re trying to offer the best experiences and solutions to our users and if that hurts our competition, so be it”. I think it’s more not having to really talk about their competitors and so on. At least I think with Google Apps, that they’re trying to be the “next generation Office Suite”.
I think they’ll have a lot more to offer than Microsoft because of what they’re doing with you guys and all the other developers out there, that they have good ideas to make products better.
Michael: Great people are on it and (there is) a lot of enthusiasm. I haven’t really looked into Microsoft recently and what the rumors are about an online version of this. And because, sooner or later, they’ll have to go this way. All I’ve seen so far is some online office thing that allows you to share some uploaded documents with others but that’s all there is, right?
What about the people who are concerned about making the jump to the cloud?
Till: There are certain levels of security of course in (our) product. One thing is the channel hosting of the solutions in the computer to the data center and everything has access controls, cameras, access cards and all these kinds of things. Everything is redundant, their internet access of course, and the server part and all these kinds of things. So that’s the secure environment.
On the other hand of course, we offer for our premium customers encryption, so that the communication that is between the server and client is encrypted because a lot of people are working are just going there and connecting to their services and are often transmitting their plain passwords and this is not clear to all of them. That’s why we use SSL for the premium customers to not show their passwords somewhere or their passwords don’t get sniffed.
And on the application level, we have certain guard mechanisms where we protect certain actions people can do like password resetting, map access and personal data access. Just two hours ago a customer called me up and said, “I want to use your product, I was thinking about an in-house destination.” I said, “we have a service solution, there is no in-house solution”. They asked, “what about security?”
I think that it’s a good point that they ask this question. The answer is very simple. I say, “Do you have a laptop?” They usually say, ” Yes I have a laptop.” I ask, “Do you have all of your personal data and all that stuff on your laptop?” They say, “Yes.” So I ask, “What happens if someone just grabs it and runs?” They say, “Yes you’re right.” This isn’t going to happen with software as a solution because it’s much harder to hack into a T3 data center or get physical access into a data center than just grabbing your laptop.
Could give me an idea of who are your demographics when you’re talking about customers and who are the people that come to talk to you about these types of things? If you could just give me an idea of what type of people we’re talking about – who are becoming your customers?
Till: When we started off, we were a European company and we had just implemented the English language and we always wanted to address the whole world market. It was always our goal when we started. We had about 30% US customers and, actually it’s the same number I think today and maybe even more.
Actually, now we support nine languages, including Japanese and Russian and with customers from about 140 countries working on MindMiester now, about a half million or so of them. We have five hundred thousand users and we have individuals and freelancers as well as a very large base of real business customers like SAP for example or Symantec. We even have Microsoft as a customer. Microsoft China, actually at an innovation center there.
It’s basically around the world from individuals to businesses. We have a lot of universities and schools. This is in a lot of countries in terms of schools and universities in Shanghai or in Hong Kong or (even) in the US. So, that’s also the interesting thing. If you’re starting a business on the Internet there really is no real border anymore. It’s all about localizing the content and the user interface.
MindMeister is a software as a service. So we’re talking about something that runs in the browser. What tools have you used to create this, what technology are you running this on?
Till: So, basically we are using Ruby on Rails. We are using MySQL right now. We are using Apache for example, Linux as our platform. I think that’s it from the technology web we are using.
So do you recommend that your users have Chrome or Firefox? Or what is it about the browser that’s changing that? That’s going to help you guys? We touched on HTML5 and how you guys are working on it. Could talk a little bit about that?
Till: We made recommendations, we put out these for our users only. If they have to, we’ll continue to support IE6 for a little longer. Firefox, Chrome, and Safari, these are all great and open really fast.
How many people are you in total?
Michael: Ten to twelve right now, with a couple of freelancers, not a huge company.
Is the plan then to just focus on this is another thing. Other companies I’ve talked with are working on several different apps. Are you just going to focus on this?
Michael: For the time being, yes. We have discussions all the time. To the extent that they could go further? No concrete plans as of yet. The market is good for that. We’re in a really good position. I have so many ideas for this. I do want to start something else with that small group of people.
I have just one more question. Since the Marketplace has gone live, has it been a good tool in getting new customers? Has it been a marketing vehicle for you guys? Have you seen a good influx of customers who’ve come through Google to connect with you guys?
Michael: Definitely, yes. So, I think it’s worth the effort to integrate to get a lot of exposure. Of course, you get new customers out of it, for us I think it’s a good thing. And, so, Google hasn’t really started to promote the whole thing. I had a call yesterday with them and they told us they would start promoting apps more aggressively.
Even so, they haven’t really started marketing. We already see the results. We’ll see what happens if they really start pushing (Apps) through their distribution channels and through the marketing, etc.
Thanks to Michael and Till for taking the time to talk to me. You can sign up for a free basic membership of MindMeister to check out their mind mapping product.
Google Business OS? Sounds Profitable
Posted on 08. Mar, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey. 1 Comments
It was reported late last week in a blurb that Google security Engineer Will Drewry had some pretty good dirt to dish about Chrome OS and its plan for the business market with a business machine due in 2011. Up until this time, there wasn’t much being said regarding Google’s plans for enterprise other than the fact that Docs is available and there are companies actively integrating it into offices around the world. But at the World Mobile Congress last week CEO Eric Schmidt was asked during his presentation what the future revenue growth areas for the company were going to be.
Without hesitation, he said the enterprise market.
For the time being, Google is only making a slow amount of headway in providing software solutions for businesses. But the early adopters that have made the switch from Microsoft’s Office over to Google Apps are seeing benefits. Google has been amenable to companies about making changes to the software, often times even on the fly. And at $50 per user, even a larger organization like Genentech has decided to make the switch. Even the popular Linux operating system, Ubuntu, comes with Google Apps as standard instead of OpenOffice.
But Google for the enterprise market is still an early adoption technology. It has the potential to take off but expect to see companies that like to take risks to get involved first. Also, small and mid-size companies would be able to see a switch have a more immediate impact over conglomerates.
Integration companies that consult with businesses on technology such as Google Apps find that a Chrome OS for business would prove to be a solid IT decisions. Jim McNelis, CEO of Dito LLC, which provides Google business solutions and migrations from Microsoft and Lotus products was upbeat when asked about an operating system that is specific for corporate use.
“I think it’s great. Chrome OS will increase the adoption of Google Apps across the board by providing a robust platform built for Google’s web applications”, said McNelis. He also expects an offline solution for situations where network connectivity is absent. “Presumably, there will be native Google Apps and complete offline sync, not to mention other tight integrations yet unseen.”
Native Google Apps? I’m getting the sense that much like Microsoft’s mutli-tiered operating system solutions (Windows Starter, Professional, etc) Google will have different flavors of Chrome OS that all could possibly have different hardware specifications. The reason I think this is that a netbook for surfing a web that is ever more interactive has different technical requirements than a tablet or a managed thin client strictly for business use.
Regardless of strategy, Google knows that captivating the corporate market is going to prove profitable. Many business users simply do not have a need for Windows, and administrators pretty much always have to lock down features on the system in order to keep the computing environment from becoming compromised.
Instead of fitting a square peg in a round hole Chrome OS can step in, be compliant with security policies and ready to deploy, most likely at a competitive price when comparing other enterprise options.
And just like the popular app markets for mobile phones, the most profitable applications will be developed for the business user. Why? Because in business, if an app is useful there is a profit incentive to pay good money for it. If it help peoples be more productive or effective on the job there are big bucks that will be paid out by companies.
You can take a look at Techrepublic’s top 10 business apps for the mobile market right here to get an idea what types are popular and how much they go for.
Ubuntu Now Calls Google Docs the Standard
Posted on 07. Feb, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey. 5 Comments
Ever used OpenOffice? I remember submitting a document once using the open format, only to find that the person I sent it to could not open it in Microsoft Word. That pretty much killed the deal for me, but a surprising development for users of Ubuntu Netbook Edition (formerly known as Ubuntu Netbook Remix) is that no longer is OpenOffice their defacto productivity suite, as the powers-that be for the Linux OS built with netbooks in mind is replacing it with Google Docs.
There’s no question about Google Docs’ importance in the software scene. They have captured a pretty big audience, even getting play as not only Google’s own corporate standard for a Microsoft Office replacement, but they have also gotten Genetech on board and almost all of the 16,000 people who work there use the Premium Edition of Google Docs for all of their work. This is interesting to note since for the Premium Edition Google charges a $50 licensing fee for each user.
Microsoft must be feeling a little weak in the knees over this. There was once a time where if you used one Microsoft solution, the common thinking was that you would use many other offerings that they had. Now that Google plans on releasing their own operating system, further promoted by Google Chrome’s emergence in the browser market, anything that they can offer in terms of applications has the potential to be successful. Just as long as they offer a solution that is just as good as their competitors, mind you.
You can check out Google Docs right here.
Google Docs to Offer Expanded Storage
Posted on 16. Jan, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey. 1 Comments
Google Docs, which has had a tumultuous history, now appears to be on a roll – the software is used by people who refuse to pay for Microsoft Office and also has spread to larger enterprises such as Genentech. That means Google has a company that is 15,000 strong testing and improving their software – with updates happening in real time. Now it appears that additional storage for Docs – what many thought would be known as the mysterious GDrive is becoming a reality. As of this writing, Google Docs has strict limitations on what you can store: 500KB for text files, PowerPoint Presentations of 10MB, spreadsheets 1MB and PDF files at 10MB.
The new rules are apparently going to be much looser. The ability to store files of any size and in any format are expected and the cap will be raised from the current 250MB to 1GB. That’s still small when compared to Gmail which offers over 6GB of online storage, but it is a good start and I think that Google wants to slowly raise these levels as time goes on and more devices start requiring online storage.
From Docs:
“Over the next couple of weeks, we’re rolling out the ability to upload, store, and share any file in Google Docs. Your files will be stored in their original format and downloadable from anywhere. Uploading files to the cloud allows them to be safely stored and accessible at all times.”
These files will be able to be shared with others in a special shared folder that you can create. And just like Gmail, Google Docs also offers offline storage now as well. You can see this evidenced by the red Offline link that is in the upper right hand corner of Google Docs.
Why all these changes? Expect to see more as Google rolls out the ability for users to operate in a cloud environment. They are preparing the HTML 5 infrastructure for devices that will run Chrome OS and Android that keep most files stored in a network environment.
