Quote:
Originally Posted by johnwhelan
But the world moves on. Novell only wanted to talk to us about changing our LAN operating system to Novell and that wasn't going to happen. For most businesses they are interested in exchanging documents with other businesses. Word has an advantage in the business world called Microsoft SQL server. Visual basic can use them both and automate a lot of tasks. So if you're standardising you go with the most flexible and the one that most companies use. Also you need to take into account disabled people such as the blind and Word has a lot more niche products to assist them.
John
|
Right.
It's not just the tool by itself that matters these days.
Service and support adds a lot of value. Often enough todi tate tge final choice.
These days MS is actively promoting their office applications as an encosystem all their own and in the corporate environment they pretty much stand alone.
For years they've invested not just in the core Office products (Word, Excel, Powerpoint) but in the next layer of tools (Project, Vizio, the now-defunct Team Manager, and Sharepoint). Lately, Teams is shapng up as a big part of the ecosystem.
The real breakthrough came with Sharepoint as an integrated document management system for Windows networks. Alternatives existed but they tended to be expensive and insular, often strong in one area but weak in others. With Sharepoint and SQL SERVER plus Windows Server and its network management tools, MS completed the package behind office.
Too many people look at Office and say the other suites match or better the features but miss the point than in a corporate environment Office and the Server products as a combo are significantly easier to deploy, manage, and ahem, pay for.
Just write one check to MS.
Once upon a time nobody got fired for buying IBM but in recent times people have been *promoted* for buying MICROSOFT.
They are ubiquitous and as you said, they have add-ons and support services for pretty much everything.
And now, thanks to Ray Ozzie, they're moving that environment to the Cloud, sort-of reinventing mainframes both as an external service shared with others or as a dedicated private system. Flexible and scaleable.
With no retraining, no conversion of data or internal apps.
Just like they migrated DOS users to Windows they're migrating entire data centers from distributed networks and hardware to virtual networks.
And because it all happens in the corporate IT space, folks focused on consumer apps and academic IT are missing their success.
There's plenty of word processors that are more pleasing to some audiences or better suited to dozens of niches; Word Perfect, Libre Office, Nota Bene, Framemaker, Atlantis, Vellum, Scrivener, Jutoh, and on and on.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_word_processors
But they're all pretty much standalone.
Word is rather like an iceberg: the part users see is a tiny part of the system that drives its use. It is a competent tool on its own but it is supported by a massive environment no other can match. Not that they don't try.
But much like Amazon in ebooks, Word holds the high ground and is showing no signs to giving it up. Too many people in too many different businesses make a living using it or supporting it for anything to catch up any time soon.
i suppose someday it'll fade but not just yet.