Status

Microsoft has released the next version of the venerable Office suite, Office 2010, and companion products Sharepoint 2010 and Visio 2010 (is Sharepoint really an Office companion product? I'll explain that in a minute) today to business customers worldwide.

It's getting harder and harder for Microsoft to make Office launches into a big deal. Office 2010 is basically Office 2007, which was basically Office 2003, each iteration dressed up with a few whiz-bang features that do little or nothing for (and sometimes work directly against) the core functionality that people look for in the package: typing documents and making spreadsheets. While the new features are not universally worthless, they are increasingly disproportionate to the value of the package as a whole.

The whiz-bang this time is Office Web Apps, a free online version of the most popular Office applications: Word, Excel, and Powerpoint.

While I like the strategy the company has adopted for dealing with the advent of cloud computing, I'm not sure I like the results. I think the Software+Service mantra they have chosen to tie existing cash-cow products to various online solutions is a good way to go from their perspective, in that it provides a leash on revenues while giving customers enough taste of the flexibility and power of utility computing to keep them from jumping ship. They are not, however, helping anyone realize any of the significant cost savings that should be possible in the utility computing model, which considering the girth of the company in the marketplace, may simply serve to give the model a bad name. I doubt that anyone in Redmond would shed any tears if that were to happen.

While integration and compatibility are good things, of late Microsoft has been using those desirable elements to create an undesirable one, dependency. This is where Sharepoint as an Office component comes in. Sharepoint has always had strong ties ties to Office, but originally, it was positioned as a sort of easy-to-use, shake-and-bake corporate intranet product. It's pretty effective in that role, and flexible enough to meet most business needs out of the box. But needing a quick response to Google's suddenly popular Apps online-office package ("need" is too strong a word; nonetheless, the company apparently felt a threat from that direction and responded accordingly), Sharepoint was pressed into service as the de facto "cloud" document store for the various online versions of Office. This, again, is not a bad move for Microsoft to make, but again, it fails to showcase the potential flexibility of utility computing.

Office Web Apps are similarly constrained. While they are free, you don't get the full functionality unless you are also using them with Office 2010 on the desktop... with all the attendant costs and constraints that brings to the table. At this point, it's silly to use them otherwise; if you own the full version, you may as well use it instead (if you need access from anywhere, just store them in Sharepoint!) and if you don't, you are better off picking another product which doesn't have the explicit goal of maneuvering you into buying the full package.

Microsoft has intelligently structured the Office game in recent years to effectively prevent customers from considering these factors and to keep adoption rates high. A recent Forrester survey, cited in the link at the top of this post, names some astounding ROI numbers for the Office package, numbers that I would not dispute; compare Office to your average Smith-Corona and see what wins. But the same survey helps illustrate how exactly the game is rigged. The comparison is made in a vacuum, one of Microsoft's own creation. It's not being made against other alternatives... and the Forrester data suggests why that is. More than half of respondents planning to upgrade to 2010 are not doing so because it's better, or because they've evaluated it in any meaningful way against alternatives; they're doing so simply because their licensing terms allow it. It's a human impulse, after all. "Hey, I can get this for free!" It's not free, of course; you paid for it once and will do so again, but the adoption is severed from the payment by terms of contract, which makes it intentionally difficult to associate the two events, and particularly difficult to get out of the cycle. It's the same reason any sort of recurring billing is a hit revenue model. The customer pays before he realizes it, then decides since the product is already paid for to go ahead and use it.

Those familiar with the "business as conflict" school of thought will recognize that this scenario puts the company inside your OODA loop, a bad place to allow an adversary. You may question whether or not Microsoft is an adversary, but putting all the feel-good partnership language aside, when someone is trying to take money out of your pocket without being entirely up front about the exchange, that puts them on the other team in my book.

Of course, they won't come out and say it, but as they slowly alter Windows to adopt tried and true Unix models, you get the idea: Server Core Best Practices on Windows Server

Not having to install the kitchen sink on every server has long given *nix systems an edge in performance and security. Keep it up, and Windows will just be another Linux distribution in the crowd before long!

Smallbiztechnology.com suggests you do just that unless they can answer three questions:

• What books have you recently read?


• What industry conferences have they been to?


• What tech industry relationships (and certifications) do they have?

Those questions aren't bad in and of themselves; you should satisfy yourself as to the qualifications of any contractor you hire. The justification presented for asking them, however, is terrible and exposes the number one unquestioned assumption both among these so-called "consultants" and many of the businesses they cater to. The assumption is exposed in one concise sentence in the post:

SMB Nation East took place this weekend in New Jersey and one of the big lessons learned at the 3 day event, of which I attended Friday, was the differentiation between those IT consultants who still are "only" able to fix your computers when things go wrong, but not able to provide strategic insight to help you grow your business.

Where did anyone ever get the idea that in something as complex and dynamic as information technology, the same person who is well-qualified to fix your technical problems would also be even remotely qualified to provide strategic insight into your business operations? Why would anyone imagine they could get both of those very specialized skills in a one-person package for the low-end rates that most of these people charge? It's like saying your neighborhood EMT should be able to also do heart surgery, and at the same mid-five figure salary he's already getting paid!

I suggest you put some thought first into whether you actually have an IT consultant, or have just hired a technician. Frankly, there's nothing wrong with just hiring a technician, and by default, that is what most small businesses have done... they don't like the price tags on real consultants. Where the problem comes in is when the assumption is made, as above, that your tech janitor should be making (and that you should be listening to) strategy suggestions.

This isn't to disparage those technicians; they simply have a different focus, and different motivations, than real IT consultants. But the motivations make all the difference.

Case in point is item three on the question list: tech industry relationships and certifications. You absolutely want your technician to have certifications these days for the technologies they are working with. But consider what that means for that technician. Unless he has all the certifications, for every technology, then what technology do you think he is going to recommend you use to solve your next business problem? And if, for whatever reason, he didn't suggest the one that was going to get him more business, what basis might he have for doing so without any certification in it?

A consultant doesn't have an investment in your choice of a given technology, because they aren't supporting it over the long run. This leaves them free to make strategic recommendations unencumbered with concerns over future revenue. Their goal can be exclusive to finding the best solution to meet your particular challenges.

If they can't do that, by all means, fire them. And ask more than three questions; you're paying top dollar, make sure you're getting the best. But don't expect them to come fix your printer. And don't expect your technician to provide you with top-flight strategic advice, and don't fire him if he doesn't give it to you. It was your mistake asking in the first place, not his in answering. If you need strategic insight to help grow your business, go find someone who is an expert in providing such advice, not someone who worked hard to get their Microsoft certification papers. An MCSE is an accomplishment, but hardly one that indicates a deep understanding of the broad panoply of technology options facing the modern business.