Jun 15th, 2009 |
As Mac usage continues to climb in the enterprise, IT staffs are faced with ever increasing challenges of supporting multiple office suites. IBM and Sun see this as an opportunity, does Microsoft see the threat?
IT executives particapting in Nemertes latest research benchmark say that Mac use is on the rise, thanks to the Halo effect making its way from iPod, to home/school Mac, to office Mac. Thirty-three percent of participants say their adoption of non-Windows computers will grow in the next year. But supporting Macs in the enterprise creates a problem as incompatibility issues between different office suites leads to calls to the help desk as well as increasing user frustration.
IBM sensed an opportunity to take market share from Microsoft when it decided to develop and give away its OpenOffice-based Lotus Symphony suite, as well as deliver a single version of Notes that looks/runs/acts the same whether on Mac, Windows (or even Linux). Sun’s OpenOffice 3.x also supports seamlessly supports all three environments. Each of these alternatives is getting a look from IT shops interested in avoiding compatibility issues by settling on a single suite of applications.
In my company for example, our Mac users are putting OpenOffice 3.x through its paces and while it does lack a few high-level editing and reviewing features we extensively use, it can indeed replace MS Office for most tasks, and for most workers (it sure would be great to see an embedded clip-art library though!).
But Microsoft continues with a dual platform strategy - separately developed products for Mac and Win, and no offerings yet for Linux other than terminal-server or web-based interfaces. Microsoft obviously continues to own the lions share of the Office productivity suite, but the cracks are starting to show. Perhaps its time that Microsoft finally consider extending it’s Windows version of Office to the Mac and Linux world?
Two issues with your post, first your last sentence says, “Perhaps its time that Microsoft finally consider extending it’s Windows version of Office to the Mac,” but as you yourself state at the beginning of the paragraph, there is an Office version for Mac. While it’s not the same version number, it’s feature set overlaps in almost every normal area of the application.
Second issue is that while your thesis is an interesting one to argue, your argument is weak. Because users have ipods and prefer business-feature lacking Macs at home, businesses need to cater to the integration problems their users want to introduce? If OpenOffice or whatever other free productivity suite is going to have any impact on businesses, it’s going to be in startups that can make choices in the beginning and start fresh.
Mac in the workplace is a joke for most business purposes. I work in a business with 300 PC users and 3 Mac users and we spend more time troubleshooting the Mac users than all the PC users combined. Between printer issues, file-sharing issues, overpriced equipment and hardware support, constant patches and updates for every piece of software bundled into OS X (not that Windows doesn’t have patches but I can centrally manage all those updates), it’s a joke to thing there is any reason they belong in a business. Designers seem to think they can only design on a Mac. Now every program we buy has PC and Mac versions, so the design requirement is out the window. Basically it boils down to this advertising hype that Macs are pretty and unique and that’s what the designers need to be reminded of.
Anyway, the point is that there will not be a huge surge of free productivity suites creaping into businesses. The conversions are horrible from a training standpoint, integration standpoint, and at the end of the day if a company is using Office already and trying to save money, they’ll just forego upgrading to the newest version of Office.
Thanks for your comments! Two quick responses: I did note that there are native Mac versions of Office, but the fact that the Mac and Windows versions of Office are different reinforces my point, it leads to compatibility issues as well as the challenge from an IT support perspective of supporting different applications (contrast that with OO or Symphony which are identical on Mac or Win). Note that Microsoft’s Mac BU sits in their Entertainment and Devices division.
The reality is that Mac use is growing in the enterprise market, and Apple continues trying to make the Mac more business-friendly (note Snow Leopard will enable ActiveSync for Mac Mail, Calendar and Address book). I can’t speak to your own issues with Mac management, but I’ll note that in our recent interviews with IT leaders from approximately 200 end-user organizations we noted that 33% of participants said they were increasing the size of their non-Windows (Mac and Linux) populations.