MS Office Enters the Clouds

At the Worldwide Partner Conference (WPC09) on Monday, Microsoft announced that it was taking MS Office into the clouds. This announcement was well-anticpated last week and it was so big that it prompted Google to pre-announce their Chrome OS very early – long before there is really anything to unveil…just to get their announcement in first. Let’s look further at Microsoft’s announcement and what it means to the businesses – especially smaller organizations and cloud computing.

Microsoft announced that it will be offering a free, lightweight version of Office that is accessed via the web rather than as resident software. This move is seen as a direct hit on Google and their Google Docs offering. Google Docs is a web-based office suite that offers superior sharing and collaboration options to the conventional MS Office suite of software.

Microsoft’s Slow Progression

Eleven years ago, Microsoft began letting people access their Outlook e-mail over the Internet, though it was a few more years before it allowed customers to “rent” space on an e-mail server instead of buying the machine themselves. In November 2008, Microsoft moved its Excel spreadsheet program and a worker-collaboration product called SharePoint to the Web. Microsoft offers access to the programs for a subscription fee, so you don’t have to buy the software up-front.

Fast Forward to Now

Now Microsoft realizes that it must move much faster. On Monday at the WPC09, it publicly showed off portions of its upcoming Office 2010 suite for the first time and announced its “Office in the clouds” intentions.

What does this mean for the small business in this current economy? At a time when all business big and small are looking at ways to cut back, it means a lot. It means easier file sharing, real-time collaboration, and a nice savings to the bottom-line. Companies want full-featured products. However, lightweight versions of the Office suite of products that nearly every company has come to rely on daily is likely going to be ‘good enough’ for quite some time. Most organizations only regularly utilize 25-40% of the true functionality of the feature-ladened Office suite anyway, so switching to a cloud-based lightweight FREE (did I mention FREE?) version will – for most small businesses especially – be a no-brainer.

I’m told that the Office web applications included will be Word, Excel, Powerpoint, and OneNote and they will run inside the browser. They will be accessed using Windows Live (not Office Live…which is being discontinued). More good news is that Microsoft guarantees that they will work equally well in IE, Firefox, and Safari.

Can a Project Manager Survive without Windows?

In this post, I’m not really hitting on anything too interesting or relevant about Project Management.  I’ve just been feeling led to look into PM’ing without Windows.  I know it’s possible…I’m doing it.  But it does seem to freak some people out.

My Decision

My wife has been a Mac user for nearly two years now.  She loves it – but she’s a photographer, among other things, so she’s a Photoshop pro and has found all things Photoshop have been much easier to perform on a Mac.  I’m her tech support, and I can say that my job has definitely been much easier since she got her Macbook Pro.  However, I was on the outside looking in and ‘winging it’ on everything until I was sort of forced into the world of Mac in March of this year.

My Windows Vista laptop blew through its third hard drive in just over a year (meaning, of course that it was no out of warranty!).  My wife went through her same speech again…”Why don’t you just get a Mac?”  Frustrated with my Gateway and all things Windows and knowing that I still have my backup HP laptop running Windows XP as a crutch, I decided to “just do it.”  I must say I haven’t looked back yet.

The Backlash

The backlash from my colleagues was immediate.  “How can you PM with a Mac?”  “What about running MS Project?”  “How can you survive?”  And my favorite one from my 19 yr-old son (because I had been a Windows lifer), “It’s sort of like turning an atheist to Christianity!”

Seriously though, I’ve loved it and I’ve had no loss in productivity.  My IT consulting right now is not requiring extensive use of project management scheduling software.  I have MS Office for Mac so running Word, Excel, and PowerPoint has not been an issue.  They work pretty much seamlessly with the Mac just like I’m used to in the Windows environment.

Other Options

That leaves us with the question of how to manage your projects.  How does the Project Manager survive without MS Project – especially if you’ve been using it for as many years as I have?  For me, thankfully as I said I’m not into heavy MS Project use at the moment.  That has allowed me to explore replacement options.  Open Project as a stand-alone application seems so far like a suitable replacement.  It works will both importing and exporting MS Project files and I’ve then used my XP laptop to confirm that my customers can read my project plans on their Windows machines using MS Project.

There are also many options from a web-based perspective.  These often offer more collaboration options allowing team members full insight into the project portfolios with dashboards, shared status information and resource usage across many projects.  ProjectOffice.net is my favorite so far – it’s full-featured, has built-in viewers for MS Project files and can import/export MS Project files.  There are other options out there like LiquidPlanner, Basecamp, etc. 

Summary

The Mac transition has been good for me.  For one thing, I’m now a much better and more knowledgeable tech support person for my wife.  I’ve broadened my horizons and had zero viruses at the same time.  Hopefully, I’ve evangelized a few individuals along the way who previously thought like me.  But I know I’ve cheated somewhat and may not have taken the leap without the backup XP laptop as a barely used crutch.

If you’ve recently converted, share your story.  If you’re a Windows diehard who thinks they could never live without it, then let me know.