Ads by TechWords

See your link here
Receive the latest technology news and information.
Computerworld Daily News (First Look and Wrap-Up)
Computerworld Blogs Newsletter
The Weekly Top 10
Cloud Computing
View all newsletters




Privacy Policy
 

Why is Microsoft Office so hard to kill?

June 30, 2009 06:07 AM ET

Active Comments
Constable Odo says: Well, then if it's that good, why bother to kill it off. Does this dislike for Office have something to...
Peter in Sacramento says: Why the need to 'kill' MS Office? The success of Office is that the applications are easy enough to install...


InfoWorld - It's the question that vexes free open source software advocates and commercial competitors around the globe: Why is Microsoft Office so difficult to dislodge from its perch atop the IT heap? Is it the exclusive bundling deals? The deep Software Assurance entrenchment? Steve Ballmer's backroom deal with the devil?

The answer, of course, is none of the above (though some evidence of a Microsoft-Hell alliance exists). Rather, it's the Office ecosystem -- the vast library of third-party add-ons and vertical solutions built (with copious encouragement from Microsoft) on Office's extensive programmatic model -- that makes Microsoft's suite so hard to kill.

[ Microsoft Office 2010 is looking good. See InfoWorld's first look and a guided tour of Office 2010 highlights. Return to the review of Office alternatives, SoftMaker Office 2008 versus OpenOffice.org 3.1. ]

Consider: A word processor is just a word processor -- until it's mated with a sophisticated macro/template package that transforms it from a generic text editing program into a task-specific custom forms utility. Likewise, a spreadsheet is just a spreadsheet -- until it's linked to a series of complex SQL stored procedures that allow the commodities trader in the next cubicle to perfectly time the market.

Microsoft Office isn't just a productivity suite. It's the world's most widely deployed Rapid Application Development (RAD) platform. Worse still (for would-be competitors), Office is insanely easy to develop for. The Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) language is almost universally understood by Windows developers, and the suite's built-in Macro Recorder makes creating and debugging new projects ridiculously easy. In fact, I wrote much of the OfficeBench test script using code snippets generated by the Macro Recorder in Office 2000. It was a great way to learn the Office object model and remains one of the suite's hidden strengths to this day.

Any attempt to topple Office means declaring war on the army of in-house and third-party ISV developers who have built their livelihoods around the suite's ever-expanding library of automation and integration APIs. So unless you can provide a viable alternative to VBA, OLE Automation, and the rest of the Office programming model, don't expect to make much headway in your quest to dethrone the king. The minions are definitely not on your side.


Reprinted with permission from

For more enterprise computing news, visit Infoworld.com
Story copyright 2006 InfoWorld Media Group, Inc. All rights reserved.

Jump to comments

$firstKeyword

Additional Resources

EFD vs. HDD - What You Need to Know
WHITE PAPER
Enterprise flash drives provide a new Tier 0 storage layer capable of delivering high I/O performance at a very low latency. Proper use of EFDs in an Oracle environment can deliver increased performance compared to fibre channel drives. Read the recommendations for identification of the best DB components for EFDs.
Gartner Research Report: Magic Quadrant for Application Delivery Controllers, 2009
WHITE PAPER
The market for products to improve the delivery of application software over networks remains dynamic and innovative. Vendors focused on solving enterprises' most-pressing application problems have become the top players.
Eight Criteria for Server Load Balancing
WHITE PAPER
Server load balancers are a simple yet highly effective means to scale an application environment while ensuring its availability. Today's solutions should also address application performance and security. Read about the top eight criteria you should consider when choosing a server load balancer and how Citrix NetScaler meets those requirements.

What People Are Saying

Featured Zone
Strategic Content Management
Learn how the right Enterprise Content Management (ECM) solution can start saving you money within a week and pay for itself in as little as three months. These case studies and white papers provide practical information on how to go from theory to reality - to help you put together a plan that will achieve your content management and process automation goals.
Enter the Strategic Content Management Zone now


IT Jobs