Duelling for the desktop

ERIC WILSON - NOVEMBER 07, 2006

THE business computer desktop is up

for grabs on the eve of Microsoft's

biggest software launch in a decade.

The business launch of Microsoft Vista

and Office 2007, expected later this

month, comes at a time when

Microsoft's lucrative double whammy

desktop stranglehold is facing its

biggest challenge in many years from

rivals such as Novell and Google.

All players are pitching new strategic

directions for wary users.

People will move with their wallet, says Chris Ward, a server and workstation

analyst at IDC.

"All of them have slightly different models that are beneficial to different

people," he says.

"The market is becoming more flexible."

Vendors live in interesting times, so their latest renditions of The Spin, The

Proof and The Gotcha should be interesting too.

THE SPIN: Novell applied technology strategist Paul Kangro says the idea of a

single, company-wide, standard operating environment is like issuing BMWs to

all sales reps, because the chairman drives one, in the hope that it will reduce

maintenance costs.

That's how he compares using OpenOffice.org 2.0 running on Windows or

Linux to using Microsoft Office.

Ward agrees in part, characterising Novell's combined offering, SUSE Linux

Enterprise 10, as "the Toyota of the computer world".

However, he says, Microsoft recognises the BMW principle and is preparing

Vista versions ranging from Basic to Premium.

Kangro points to the bottom line: "Trade off the licensing cost with the one-time

transition cost and you'll be many zeros in front.

"Then spend those savings on applications that will actually make you money."

This is feasible, Novell says, thanks to improved file compatibility with

Microsoft Office, plus Excel macro compatibility.

Kangro promises macro compatibility with the rest of Microsoft soon too, so the

only lock-in left, he says, is deeply integrated add-ins.

"Five per cent of your workforce may still need to have Microsoft Office."

Kangro says. "That means the argument to standardise on it is bogus."

Under this mixed model, people who need Microsoft Office keep it, while the

rest get Novell.

Tony Wilkinson, Microsoft Australia information worker business group

director, says the focus for Microsoft Office has moved on from personal

productivity to address "organisational productivity".

"It enables people to collaborate across boundaries of time, location and roles,

to manage the life-cycle of content, automate business processes and improve

business insight," Wilkinson says.

Office 2007 includes servers and services -- not only desktop applications,

Wilkinson says.

Key among these is SharePoint for supporting "organisational productivity

scenarios".

Ward's take on this is that Microsoft hasn't provided many new features but has

made existing ones easier to find and use. New in the field is Google Docs and

Spreadsheets. Its first version is pitched to individual users.

The search king has entered desktop productivity with lightweight browser-

based Web 2.0 applications.

On offer are basic productivity tools that support multiple simultaneous users

working on the same documents together.

Google Docs and Spreadsheets , product manager Jen Mazzon says the service

has been well received by "geographically dispersed workers".

"People attach a spreadsheet to an email and from that day forth they have

different versions they need to consolidate," Mazzon says.

"Our focus is solving the problem of sharing and collaborating online, and

making that easy." Google Docs and Spreadsheets can import and export

Microsoft Office formats and make PDF files.

Google Spreadsheets has a built-in chat program to aid collaboration.

Putting the service in a network appliance to provide instant collaborative

applications across a business, similar to Google's search appliance "certainly is

a conceivable future direction", Mazzon says.

This style of Web 2.0 scenario could spell trouble for Microsoft - more trouble

than OpenOffice.org with Novell - Gartner client platforms research vice-

president Mike Silver says.

"People are looking for capability they don't have in Microsoft Office," Silver

says."THE PROOF: With SUSE Linux Enterprise 10, the price is right, Kangro

says.

One Novell customer saved $3 million in licence fees - a public-sector entity

Kangro can't disclose now but he says he will reveal names in the first half of

2007.

Novell's offering is 80 to 85 per cent cheaper than Microsoft Office, including

transition and training costs, Kangro says.

"It's free to try, so it's criminal if people don't try it," he says.

Some people are too busy to test new systems, however, and prefer adapting

something familiar.

Rocla Technology laboratory services manager Bede Harrington has been busy

clearing a backlog of experiments and a deluge of inquiries, so he deployed

Microsoft InfoPath 2007 to integrate Microsoft SharePoint 2007, with

experiment results stored in an Microsoft Access 2005 database.

Getting multiple betas to work with a previous version of Access had its

moments, but even this was very productive compared with a traditional

programming environment.

The result is a 2007 Microsoft Office System for scheduling staff experiments.

It generates and publishes progress reports and final results to the rest of the

organisation, maximising laboratory efficiency while minimising pesky

inquiries.

In another Microsoft case, Grant Chapman, group manager of desktop and

infrastructure systems at KAZ, wanted to eat his own dog food before supplying

Windows Vista to KAZ customers.

With Vista loaded, Chapman says, he only turns off his machine to save power,

not to reboot.

He says he sleeps better at night, knowing bit-locker hard-disk encryption and

more granular security policies are protecting his data.

"Microsoft has learned a lot of lessons," Chapman says.

All this is too much for Salesforce. com Asia-Pacific operations vice-president

Doug Farber.

Being an on-demand man, he doesn't like time-consuming installations or

intricate configurations.

That's why he uses Google Docs and Spreadsheets for working with colleagues

on projects.

"Does it really make sense to go off and get a massive package?" Farber asks.

"You're paying as much for superfluous software as the computer."

THE GOTCHAS: Novell's Kangro shoots down his Web 2.0 opponent with a

single question: "How do I use Google Docs Spreadsheets when flying on a

plane?"

Gartner's Mike Silver says it will be a while before Web 2.0 matures to offer

offline support.

Novell, also has an online weakness, he says, noting that OpenOffice.org

contains little to take on Microsoft's SharePoint Server.

Even small businesses can access SharePoint features at Microsoft's Office Live

online service.

Microsoft offers more, and with good reason, Silver says.

"The more you buy into Microsoft Office Servers, the more you're locked into

Microsoft, the less they're a commodity, the more likely you are to stay with

their product," the analyst says.

This means support sunsets. That's when security patches stop 10 years after a

product's first release.

Therefore, Silver says, up to 30 per cent of business users will be forced to

migrate from Windows 2000 before 2010.

To add to the itch, some Office 2000 applications will need an external

converter to read Office 2007 documents, so users probably won't be able to

launch these as incoming email attachments.

Of course, relatively few machines today are powerful enough to run all of

Vista's features, so how about a hardware upgrade?

Kangro says SUSE 10 will run on a 400MHz machine with 256MB of RAM.

He predicts an "avalanche" after early adopters prove the product.

IDC's Chris Ward warns, however, that life isn't so simple because Linux comes

from a "techie background".

"The challenge for Novell is to change that view to one that the software doesn't

need configuring," Ward says.

"That won't happen overnight. It took a while even for Windows to become the

dominant platform."

Eric Wilson develops software that complements and competes with Microsoft

on the Office platform. He does not endorse any product.