TechworkLife

Office Standard Ad Campaign

It is becoming more and more apparent that large sums are being spent to persuade users of all types to abandon their Microsoft Office software (Word, Excel, and PowerPoint) in favor of the network types provided by Yahoo, Google and others. Is this a fulfillment of a claim made many years ago by Sun Systems (John Gage)?

Tech columnists on NPR, CNN and others see this as an appealing alternative for the broadband connected home user who doesn't get an OEM load of Microsoft Office (or a legacy or pirated version). Since the software is usually free and a home user's desired functionality and feature expectations are lower than a typical business user, the choice seems clear: hop on the Internet to work your apps.

If this was the driving force for the Office-type application use, then Microsoft (MS) would already be out of that business, but it is not. The current crop of free Office software in circulation is based on staying compatible with MS files, formats and features for good reason. Even a home user will pause to consider if their documents created at home will really be of a compatibility with what they use at work even if their aren't cross-tabbing their spreadsheets or multi-columning their word processing documents. Work standards rule, even at home.

Information Technology (IT) workers know that the end-user most readily sees the difference in dissimilar types of software (perhaps brands?) ahead of background programmatic issues. This is why back office PHP, Linux, and MySQL applications that work with Internet Explorer or other browsers on the desktop elicit few objections from the executive suite as long as these open source processes have sufficient uptime. Companies love not having licensing fees on their balance sheets and since they are relatively unseen by the end-user, blame for errors doesn't fall readily on these non-proprietary applications. Not so for the desktop office applications. Attachments are most often composed in Office apps and the failure to be read by a recipient is, in the user's mind, most readily explained by inconsistency of branded software. It is a reasonable assumption and a variable that companies are willing to avoid to get business done. Microsoft is the beneficiary of this way of thinking as they control the standard.

I propose that to overcome the obstacle that exists with office application deployment from open source systems that there be a credentialing agency established with the sole purpose of public relations. It could be funded by those companies most interested in this promoting open standards (Yahoo and Google among others) and have esteemed University members (educational institutions like the largess of Microsoft but also feel the pinch at some level). Like a "Good Housekeeping" seal approved (or maybe Underwriter's Laboratory) office technologies could package themselves like any other consumer good with the seal. IT departments would then have something other than web blogs to support their choices, and maybe the spell would be broken.

Is this any different from things like Oasis? Maybe not in the motivation, but it would be sold into the business community aggressively to succeed. . This means TV commercials during the US Open golf tournament and ads in Forbes and the Economist magazines touting the "Office Application Certification" by "CertApp" (or whatever it will be called). Efforts to knock down the Microsoft OOXML will not succeed unless promoted outside of the IEEE, ISO and RFC arena that appeals to techocrats and geekdom and placed into a Madison avenue track. There are plenty of standards efforts out there, but they do not appeal to the correct decision makers. MS Office has to be labeled the "high priced spread" that is unnecessary for business to operate.