Microsoft Office Reference Guide

Mar 26, 2004

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2006 New Year's Trends

This week. the guides have been asked to discuss their thoughts on what will occur in 2006. I looked back at some of my ideas for last year, and while I can't crow, I was on top of a few trends.

This year, the big stories are obvious: Vista and Office 12. Here's what I see on the horizon.

More Expensive Multimedia Hardware, Part 2

I guess this was basically a "duh" prediction. But with Microsoft Vista and Office 12 on the horizon, can another hardware upgrade be far behind?

In the presentations world, there is always a move to more power on laptops, to support 3D backgrounds and potentially, high definition video. So far, the emphasis has been on power conservation for battery life and wireless capability. I believe that in 2006 we'll see more and more "super laptops" with high powered graphics adapters – and the ability to power multiple monitors and projectors.

Some People Will Love Office 12, Power Users May Balk

I actually wrote about a quick look at Office 12 in the fall. By now quite a few screenshots of the various apps have circulated online and the final beta is anticipated this spring, with release later in 2006.

As you probably know by now, the main difference will be in the three main programs, Word, Excel and PowerPoint, and they will share a strip of contextual menus at the top currently called a "ribbon."

Power users who have already learned where to find the features they want will be momentarily perplexed in locating them again, and they will probably be put off at first.

But the main body of Office users will suddenly have features exposed that they never really used or understood. More and more users will suddenly find they can take advantage of very professional looking charts, diagrams, shadows, and effects that until now had required a third party tool like PhotoShop.

As a side note, there may be some uproar about Microsoft going along with other large corporations and making cases on trademark issues against those who use its product names in their own businesses. While few of these folks want to go up against a gaggle of MS lawyers, a few might try to embarrass the behemoth in the court of public opinion. I know of an education site that changed its URL to PPT for Teachers instead of the word "PowerPoint." Annoying and costly for some.

Finally, a major trend continuing in the Office apps is their move to use server technology. Joining Outlook and its use of MS Exchange Server are the other programs, including PowerPoint, which is rumored to have a cataloging service of some kind to keep track of presentations and slides working with SharePoint Services.

There will be confusion as to the best way to do document sharing and collaboration, with Microsoft's new acquisition, Groove (shared workspace) being folded into Office which is currently featuring SharePoint.

The ramifications of a set of folders in XML format comprising a single file will also play out. What will happen to the programming of VBA? Will the new formats really be stable and easy to use, and as hoped, web friendly, making everything a database? Or will there be corruption and data loss issues that could not be anticipated?

Online Software Services

For years I have heard Larry Ellison claim that all software will inevitably be online, with online storage and databases by guess who – Oracle. Now because of Google, it's happening, and Microsoft is doing it.

Microsoft Office Live will launch in 2006, enabling users to use a subscription service to write, calculate and present online, perhaps with advertiser support, perhaps not. MS Live users will be able to use:

A professional Web site, hosted by Microsoft
A secure online workspace for organizing and managing customer and business information
A complete set of tools for managing time, tasks, projects, and company data that integrates with your existing Microsoft Office programs

My guess is that the early versions of LIVE will have shortcomings. It will take a few iterations to get it right. But, for mobile users who already access e-mail from web based accounts, and with broadband enabling the upload and download of large files, it will be very popular with road warriors and early adopters.

Prediction: Users will still want to maintain their own work product and files locally and carry backups on flash drives. If this is not seamless with MS Live, it will not succeed.

But speaking of mobility, how about PowerPoint on an iPod? At CES I will be looking at programs that can convert video and transfer it to the iPod – PowerPoint in your shirt pocket would be pretty cool...

Online Conferencing

Microsoft Office will complete the integration of Live Meeting and as ordinary users of services like VOIP and Skype get used to joining "meetings" this space will be ultra competitive.

Some will demand better video for participants, others will concentrate on file sharing and collaboration tools. However, everyone will be looking for the easiest and least bug-infested solution.

How will the merger of Skype and eBay affect this situation?

I believe that it is likely that with eBay's participation more and more business to business activity will use Skype, and full fledged web conferencing won't be far behind.

How the various players will fare on Vista will also be a factor on who succeeds and who fails. Webex has been the leader in this space, but Macromedia Breeze and Microsoft Live Meeting will be coming up with new features to lead the competition. In addition, Citrix Go To Meeting will be formidable, with excellent reviews and performance to this point.

There will be lots of overlap between business conferencing and personal conferencing (Skype) and each software group will try to use the others' features to grow its business.

The main area of contention will be ease of use, and that includes pricing. Macromedia's Breeze may suffer because of the complexity of how users need to access it services.

And I believe that that's really the story for 2006. Will complexity and the plethora of new features justify the move to Vista and Office 12 for those who have achieved a level of comfort with MS Office? Will they want to move to Web-based services and will they need to learn collaboration tools, or can they get along just fine with local e-mail (attached documents) and applications which they have finally mastered?

It should be an interesting year. Stay tuned.

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