Category Archives: microsoft

google, microsoft

Serena flip-flops: goes Google, then back to Microsoft

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Interesting story from Serena software, an 800-employee company with 29 offices around the globe whose products cover application lifecycle management and business process management.

In June 2009 the company switched to Google Apps, meriting a post on the Official Google Enterprise Blog. Ron Brister, Senior manager of Global IT Operations talks about the change:

it was becoming increasingly clear that our messaging infrastructure was lacking. Inbox storage space was a constant complaint. Server maintenance was extremely time-consuming, and backups were inconsistent. Then we found that – calculating additional licenses of Microsoft Exchange, client access licenses for users, disaster recovery software, and additional disk storage space to increase mailbox quotas to 1.5GB – staying with our existing provider would have cost us upwards of $1 million. That was a nearly impossible number to justify with executives.

We thought about replacing our on-premise solution, but to tell the truth, we were skeptical. I, personally, had been a Microsoft admin for 15 years, and Microsoft technologies were ingrained in my thought processes. But Google Apps provided many pluses: Gmail, Google’s Postini messaging security software and 25 GB of mailbox space, as well as greater uptime and 24/7 phone support.

The overall move to Google Apps took all of six hours. We waited for the phones to ring, but all we heard was silence – in fact, we sat there playing meebo for quite a while – and still, nothing happened. We cut the cord all in one stroke to avoid the hassle of living in two environments at once. We made the switch globally, all in one day – and, due to the advantages of this cloud computing solution, we’ve never looked back.

Sounds good – the perfect PR story for Google. Until this happened, one year on – it’s Brister again:

We work closely with our 15,000 worldwide customers to deliver solutions that help them be more successful.  As a result, we rely heavily on collaboration tools for our employees to share information and work together with customers and partners. 

This is one of the chief reasons we’ve chosen to adopt Exchange Online and SharePoint Online together with Office 2010.  They deliver trustworthy, enterprise-class solutions – with the performance, security, privacy, reliability and support we require. We know that Microsoft is a leader in the providing these kinds of solutions, and in our discussions with them, it became clear that they are 100% committed to Serena’s success and delivering solutions that drive the future of collaboration.

Using Office, SharePoint and Exchange will allow us to collaborate more effectively internally and with customers and partners, many of whom use the same technologies, and we can do so without having to deal with content loss or clients being unable to open or edit a document. In particular, Exchange is unchallenged in its calendaring and contact management abilities, mission critical functions for a global company such as Serena.

Big change. Leaving aside the fluff about “trustworthy, enterprise-class solutions”, what went wrong? Did the phones start ringing?

I’m guessing that the biggest clue here is the point about many of Serena’s customers using “the same technologies”. Apparently there was friction between Office and Exchange elsewhere, and Google Apps at Serena. Of course this could work the other way, if the day comes when more of your customers are on Google.

Here’s a few more clues from Brister:

There are alternatives on the market that promise lower costs, but in our experience, this is a fallacy.  When looking at alternatives, CIOs should really evaluate the total cost of ownership as well as the impact on user productivity and satisfaction, as there can be hidden costs and higher TCO.  For instance, slow performance and/or lack of enterprise-class features (e.g., with calendaring and contact management) will torpedo the value of such a backbone system, and may get the CIO fired.

We are currently upgrading to Office 2010, and look forward to taking advantage its hybrid nature– enabling us to embrace the cloud for scale and more rapid technology innovation while preserving what we like about software, including powerful capabilities and the ability to work anywhere – even offline. 

Brister again mentions calendaring and contact management. I guess things like those meeting invitations that automatically populate your calendar and which you accept or reject with a click or two. Offline gets a plug too.

Note that Serena has not gone back to on-premise. I’d be interested to know how the cost of the new BPOS solution compares to the “upwards of $1 million” cost which Brister complained about in 2009, for staying on-premise.

Did Microsoft simply buy Serena back? Brister says no:

Since this blog posted, there has been some speculation that our decision to migrate from Google Apps to Microsoft BPOS was based solely on price, and that Microsoft, to quote a favorite film, made us an offer we couldn’t refuse.  This is 100% false.  Microsoft is not giving us anything for free. 

It’s important not to make too much of one case study. Who knows, Brister may be back a year from now with another story. But it shows that Microsoft cannot be counted out when it comes to cloud-hosted Enterprise software. I’d be interested in hearing other accounts of how the “Go Google” switch works out in practice.

cloud computing, microsoft, mobile, silverlight, software development, visual studio

Steve Ballmer and Ray Ozzie at All things Digital – a poor performance

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Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie put on a poor performance when quizzed by Walt Mossberg at the All Things Digital conference, judging by Ina Fried’s live blog.

What was wrong with it? They allowed the conversation to be focused mainly on competing products: Apple iPad, Google Android, Google Apps, Google search. Since these products have exposed weaknesses in Microsoft’s own offerings, it was unlikely to work out well.

Mossberg asks about the transition to the cloud. “You guys are putting, for instance, a version of Office in the cloud.”

That was a gift. You would expect the two men to enthuse about how Microsoft’s dominance with desktop Office was now including the cloud as well, how the Office Web Apps enable new opportunities for collaboration, how Microsoft’s investment in XML for Office was now enabling the same document to live both on the desktop and in the cloud.

Nope. Ozzie waffles about people being more connected. Ballmer “disputes the notion that everything is moving to the cloud”.

So what about Steve Jobs prediction, of a transition from PCs to tablets and mobile devices? Ballmer says “not everyone can afford five devices,” lending support to the notion that Windows is for those who cannot afford something better.

Mossberg asks about tablets. Although Mossberg did not say so explicitly, tablets have been a tragi-comedy at Microsoft. Bill Gates evangelised the tablet concept years ago, pre-echoing Jobs’ claim that they would largely replace laptops. Microsoft tried again and again, with XP Tablet Edition, Vista on tablets, then “Origami”, or Ultra-mobile PC. Going back even further there were was the stylus-driven Palm-size PC (I have one in the loft). Tablet PC was not a complete failure, but remained an expensive niche. Origami sank without trace.

Ballmer replied that the “race is on”. Meaning? I guess, now that Apple has demonstrated how to make a successful Tablet, Microsoft will copy it? Or what?

I am not sure how you defend such a poor track record; but the starting point would be to explain that Microsoft has learned from past mistakes. In some ways it has; Windows 7 learns from mistakes in Vista, and Windows Phone 7 learns from mistakes in Windows Mobile.

None of that from Ballmer, who says vaguely that he expects Windows to run on a variety of devices. He makes matters worse later, by defending the stylus. “A lot of people are going to want a stylus,” he says. Some do, perhaps, but Apple has pretty much proved that most people prefer not to have one. I’d like to see effort go into designing away the need for a stylus, rather than implying that Microsoft is just going to repeat its part mistakes.

Someone in the audience asks, “Will we see Silverlight on Android or iPhone?” “My guess is  if it did, it would be blocked”, says Ballmer, ignoring the Android part of the question.

He’s ignoring the force of the question. Why bother developing for Silverlight, if it is locked into a Microsoft-only future, especially considering the company’s poor position in mobile currently? Ballmer could have mentioned the Nokia Symbian port. He could have said how Microsoft would get it on iPhone just as soon as Apple would allow it. He could have said that Microsoft is working with Google on an Android port – I don’t know if it is, but certainly it should be. He could have said that Silverlight plus Visual Studio plus Microsoft’s server applications is a great platform that extends beyond Windows-only clients.

Microsoft does have problems; but it also has strong assets. However it is doing an exceptionally poor job of communicating its strengths.

Update: There is a fuller transcript at Engadget, in which Ballmer and Ozzie come over better, though they still fail to impress. On mobile though, I like this comment:

We have new talent, we had to do some cleanup, we did it for Windows, and we’re doing it for mobile. And excellence in execution is also part of the equation.

I’d be interested in hearing from anyone present at the event.

apple, google, microsoft

On Microsoft: is the sky falling? Remember Netware?

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The top story on Guardian Technology right now is a rumour about Google getting rid of Windows. Apparently Google prefers its employees to use Mac or Linux.

Why is this interesting? I suspect because the world is now looking for evidence that Microsoft is failing. Microsoft failing in mobile is one thing, but to fail in its heartland of desktop operating systems is even more interesting. Presuming that Google itself has “gone Google”, it is also a reminder that once you free your organisation from Office and Outlook and Exchange, it also enables you to shift from Windows on the desktop. A side-effect of cloud is choice of local operating system.

Most businesses still run Windows as far as I can tell. Microsoft’s platform is also very broad. I had a discussion with the Windows Embedded team recently about point-of-service and digital signage; interesting stuff, and invisible to most of us.

So the sky is not falling yet. Nevertheless, if these is a public perception that Microsoft is failing to keep pace with new models of computing, that in itself is a serious problem.

I have not forgotten the Novell story. Back in the nineties, everyone knew that Windows NT was supplanting Novell’s Netware. At the same time, everyone knew that Netware was in most respects superior to Windows NT: the directory was more advanced, maintenance was easier, reliability was better. Here’s a blog from 1999 by Nick Holland explaining why:

The general industry perception is that Novell is a "has-been".  Microsoft Windows NT is where everyone is going.

I often get people asking me if they should switch to NT, and I ask them why they think they should.  The answer: "Well, isn’t everyone else?"  The reply: 1) No, they aren’t.  2) even if they were, how does that mandate that you should?

Holland goes on to note that Netware is still more widely used than Windows, and explain in detail why he prefers to install and support Netware. He was a Netware guy defending his choice; but reading his rant a decade later there’s not much to disagree with in his technical assessment.

So why did Windows NT win in the market, against an entrenched and superior alternative? There were several factors. Windows had already won on the client, and Microsoft ensured that it integrated best with its own directory and servers. Second, executives liked the idea of using the same platform on both client and server; support would not be able to blame the other guy. Third, once the perception that everyone was switching to Windows NT took hold, it became self-fulfilling. In the end, that perception may have been the most significant thing.

Today, perception is working against Microsoft. Windows mobile is a shrinking platform. Internet Explorer is losing market share. Microsoft has had the embarrassment of working for years on Tablet PC and Origami (ultra mobile PC), only to have Apple beat it easily with the iPad, its first product launch in that market.

Microsoft’s Brandon LeBlanc takes the Financial Times to task for saying:

Windows is known for being more vulnerable to attacks by hackers and more susceptible to computer viruses than other operating systems.

I don’t doubt the effort Microsoft has made over security for a number of years now, and LeBlanc makes some fair points. Nevertheless, I suspect the general reader will agree with what the FT says. They are more likely to have suffered from malware on a Windows machine, or to have friends that have suffered, than with a Mac or Linux (if they know anyone running Linux). That counts for more than any amount of spin about security enhancements in Windows.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs says, as summarised by Ina Fried:

When we were an agrarian nation, all cars were trucks because that’s what you needed on the farms. Cars became more popular as cities rose, and things like power steering and automatic transmission became popular. PCs are going to be like trucks. They are still going to be around…they are going to be one out of x people. This transformation is going to make some people uneasy…because the PC has taken us a long ways. It’s brilliant. We like to talk about the post-PC era, but when it really starts to happen, it’s uncomfortable.

Jobs is right, though he is focused on the device. He is not an internet guy, and that is a weakness, as John Battelle describes in this iPad post. You can debate whether the future tips more towards Apple or Google. Neither scenario is any comfort to Microsoft.

The sky is not falling yet. Microsoft’s platform is still an important one. Follow the trends though, and they all seem to point to a lesser role for the company in the coming decade than in the last one. Windows 7 surprised us with its quality. We need a few more surprises of equal or greater significance before that perception will change.

apple, google, internet, microsoft

Google Chrome Mac and Linux arrives – may hurt Firefox more than Safari

Today Google announced that Chrome for Mac and Linux is now fully released:

Since last December, we’ve been chipping away at bugs and building in new features to get the Mac and Linux versions caught up with the Windows version, and now we can finally announce that the Mac and Linux versions are ready for prime time.

The two big stories in the browser world right now are the decline of Microsoft Internet Explorer (though it still commands more than half the market  in most stats that I see) and the rise of Google Chrome. Why do users like it? From what I’ve seen, they like the performance and the usability. In fact, Chrome would make a great case study on why these factors count for more than features in user satisfaction. That said, I’ve been using Chrome on the Mac today and while it starts up more quickly than Safari, performance overall seems similar and I doubt there will be a huge rush to switch.

In the stats for ITWriting.com, I’ve seen steadily increasing Chrome usage:

  • July 2009: 4.2%
  • October 2009: 4.6%
  • January 2010: 9.6%
  • May 2010: 13.7%

So far this month, IE is down to 35.3% in the stats here, behind Firefox at 35.9%.

These figures are not representative of the internet as a whole, though I’d argue that it does represent a technical readership which may well be a leading indicator.

Chrome seems to be gradually taking market share from all the major browsers, though IE is doing so badly that any defections from Firefox to Chrome are more then made up by IE defectors to Firefox, if I’m interpreting the stats correctly. This won’t always be the case though, and Mozilla is vulnerable because unlike Microsoft or Apple the browser is the core of its business.

There is also a sense in which Chrome competes with Firefox for the user who has decided not to use the browser that comes with the operating system.

Chrome is strategically important to Google, not just as a browser, but as a platform for applications. It hooks into the Web Store announced at the recent Google I/O conference, and it will soon be easy to create browser applications that run offline. Google has the financial muscle to market Chrome. I’d also suggest that the momentum behind other projects, especially Android but also Google Apps, will indirectly benefit the browser.

On the Mac, it is worth noting that both Safari and Chrome use the same open source WebKit project, sponsored by Apple, which I guess is more interesting now that Google and Apple are competing fiercely in mobile.

adobe, intel, microsoft, silverlight, software development

What is happening with Silverlight on Intel Moblin/Meego?

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Last September, Microsoft and Intel announced a port of Silverlight to Moblin Linux. I posted on the subject here, including a quote from Microsoft’s Brian Goldfarb:

Microsoft and Intel announced today that the two companies have agreed to work together to bring support for Silverlight 3 to Intel’s Atom-based Mobile Internet Devices (MID). These Atom-based devices run on Windows and Moblin, an open source, Linux-based operating system targeted at Atom-based devices. In order to help bring Silverlight content to these devices, Microsoft has provided Intel with Silverlight source code and test suites, and Intel will provide Microsoft with an optimized version of Silverlight for Moblin devices that Microsoft can then redistribute to OEMs.

Since then, Moblin has merged with Novell’s Maemo to form MeeGo (though this is still work in progress), and we’ve heard very, very little about Silverlight on either platform. The only snippet of news I have is that it was mentioned at the Intel Developer Forum in Beijing and reported by Char Zvolanek, who said that it came up in the Meego Q&A after regular sessions ended, and Silverlight will be supported in Meego  version 1.1 in October:

In May, the 1.0 version will be released, and with 1.1 coming out in October, there will be support for Silverlight, Java, and Air. Developers can write native or runtime apps that can be Java-based, Web-based, Silverlight-based, or Air-based.

Today, another clue, but not a good one for Silverlight. Intel is holding an application lab on May 26th in San Jose, for developing for the Intel AppUp store, either on Windows or Moblin. On the agenda: C/C++ and Adobe AIR, and the upcoming Adobe AIR SDK for Moblin. No Silverlight.

If anyone is going along, and can discover any news about Silverlight on Moblin, I’d be interested to know.

microsoft, salesforce.com

Microsoft sues Salesforce.com for patent infringement – but why?

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Microsoft has filed a patent infringement actionagainst Salesforce.com.

The Register has posted more details. The filing[pdf] lists nine counts of alleged infringement:

1. Method for mapping between logical data and physical data

2. System and method for providing and displaying a web page having an embedded menu

3. Method and system for stacking toolbars in a computer display

4. Automated web site creation using template driven generation of active server page applications

5. Aggregation of system settings into objects

6. Timing and velocity control for displaying graphical information (2 counts)

7. Method and system for identifying and obtaining computer software from a remote computer

8. System and method for controlling access to data entities in a computer network

I make no comment on the legal validity of these claims. On the broader issue though, Microsoft says this:

Microsoft has been a leader and innovator in the software industry for decades and continues to invest billions of dollars each year in bringing great software products and services to market. We have a responsibility to our customers, partners, and shareholders to safeguard that investment, and therefore cannot stand idly by when others infringe our IP rights

My observation is that I have seen Salesforce.com shake up the industry by making its multi-tenant online application and platform work for its customers. Although there are some parallels, the Salesforce.com platform is more radical than Microsoft Azure and has more potential to reduce costs, because it is based on a single shared application, rather than being a hosted platform for custom applications. The differences are not absolute, because the Force.com platform also supports custom applications, and Microsoft also offers multi-tenanted applications, but if you look at the core propositions the distinction is valid.

Again, I have no idea what the legal outcome will be, but from a public relations perspective this does not look good for Microsoft. It raises the question: is Microsoft litigating because it cannot succeed in the market?

Small companies and patent trolls sue large companies because they have little to lose, and potentially a lot to gain. Large companies show more restraint. I have always assumed that there are thousands of plausible patent infringements among the largest technology companies, and that the industry would descend into a kind of litigation meltdown if all of them were pursued, to nobody’s benefit other than lawyers.

The question then: why is Microsoft going after Salesforce.com now?

.net, adobe, flash, java, microsoft

Java versus C/C++ performance – which is really faster?

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Cliff Click of Azul Systems has an excellent post on Java vs C/C++ performance:

Is Java faster than C/C++?  The short answer is: it depends.

He then presents three categories of cases: the first C/C++ beats Java, the second where Java beats C/C++, and the third and longest, where C/C++ proponents claim Java is slower but in reality it is not.

My quick summary: there are few cases where Java (or C#) is so much slower that it matters, save for one big issue which Click mentions early on – start-up time:

Flash games beat Java games mostly because it took 30+sec to load the JVM from disk… and so now the web-game developer community has settled on Flash as the standard (and it still takes 10+sec to load the JVM).

Start-up time makes a big difference to usability, for reasons which I cannot entirely explain. Just for fun, I’ve been running Microsoft Office 95 in a virtual instance of Windows XP recently, and the fact that Word 95 loads in a blink makes it feel much faster than Word 2010, which takes 5-10 seconds on first load, even though the productivity difference must be negligible.

If I had to theorise about this, I’d say it is to do with the way humans learn from experience. We don’t like waiting, and if an application take a while to start then part of our brain tells us to avoid it in future. We override that instinct when it is an app we need to run, but it contributes to a negative impression.

The opposite is also true. If an application starts instantly – I mean to the point where we can use it, not just a splash screen – it contributes to a positive impression and we are more inclined to use it in future.

Incidentally, Click thinks that Java is generally faster than C#, though he adds that he is “not able to give C# a fair treatment” because he does not track it closely.

microsoft, sharepoint

SharePoint 2010 web launch delivers blank web page

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Microsoft has suffered an embarrassing technical problem at the launch of SharePoint 2010 and Office 2010. The pre-launch publicity made a big deal of how this launch was both web-based, with the keynote streamed globally, and built on SharePoint 2010.  

Microsoft’s global launch website http://www.the2010event.com for the 2010 suite of products was built on Microsoft SharePoint 2010, reaching more than 60 countries and 26 languages worldwide.

says the press release. CNet’s Ina Fried has some more background:

If we went with (SharePoint) 2007 we probably would have cut corners a little bit," said Carol Matthews, a senior marketing manager in Microsoft’s information worker team. Instead, she just had to convince boss Chris Capossela to bet the launch on a product that was still in testing. Microsoft does have an HTML-based backup for Wednesday’s launch, but Matthews said that has more to do with the unreliability of the Web than of SharePoint.

The hour came; and this is what the site delivered to me and, according to Twitter, many others:

image

By coincidence, this came just after I wrote a post about SharePoint including this comment from a consultant:

just because a thing can be done with SharePoint doesn’t mean it should (for example, websites usually should NOT be built in SharePoint, in our opinion).

Maybe the technical hitch is nothing to do with SharePoint. Still, it’s unfortunate.

Update: later on in the launch someone circulated an URL for watching the keynote directly in Windows Media Player. That worked fine – but bypassed all the SharePoint content.

cloud computing, microsoft, sharepoint

Office 2010: the SharePoint factor

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Microsoft Office 2010 launches today. I’ve been using the product since for some months, in beta and final form, and written a fair amount on the subject. Is it worth upgrading? There’s no simple answer. If you spend a lot of time working in Office, then even a small tweak might be worth the upgrade cost. On the other hand, it is a struggle to identify must-have features in the desktop product, which is hardly surprising given how many revisions it has already been through.

That said, I’ve also installed SharePoint 2010, and it’s apparent to me that Office 2010 plus SharePoint 2010 is more interesting than Office 2010 on its own. SharePoint 2010 enables three things that were not done, or done less well, in previous releases:

1. Office Web Apps. Although the Web Apps have frustrations and limitations, the ability to navigate to SharePoint with a web browser, and to view and generally edit documents without opening desktop Office, is a big deal. I’ve found it handy on a netbook, for example, and even on machines where Office is installed. It is also useful on iPhones or other smartphones. Another aspect is the link with Windows Live. Now you can upload a document somewhere others can view it without needing to download it or install a  viewer.

2. Collaboration. Via SharePoint 2010, you get simultaneous co-authoring in Word and PowerPoint on the desktop, and in Excel and OneNote on Office Web Apps. The co-authoring story is a bit mixed at the moment – for example, desktop Excel does not support co-authoring – but this is an interesting feature for some scenarios.

3. Offline SharePoint. SharePoint Workspace lets you work with documents offline and have them automatically synchronize later. There’s a few things I don’t like about SharePoint Workspace. It is not as seamless as I would like, opening in its own window rather than showing up as an Explorer folder, and it presented me with an error saying I had too many documents:

image

The Sync Status then reports an “unknown error” despite having just displayed a message saying what the error is. According to online help, you can store “approximately 500 documents”, though if you exceed it then it still works but with “degraded performance”, up until another limit of 1800 documents. I’d like a way to specify “only those documents modified in the last three months”, or something like that, but cannot see anyway to do this automatically. What you can do is a thing called “Discard local copy” which leaves only the header in the offline store, but you have to apply this manually. Not perfect then, but still useful.

The simple conclusion then is that to make sense of Office 2010 you need SharePoint 2010. The snag is that SharePoint is not something to roll out casually. Although it has a huge number of interesting features, it is also complex and easy to break.

I noticed this post from SharePoint consultants Cloud2, which specialises in NHS (the UK National Heath Service) deployments. I guess you would expect a consultant to emphasise that installing SharePoint is something which requires expert help; but even taking that into account there are some interesting comments here. A sample few:

Develop a careful and well considered Information Architecture – This is probably the single hardest thing to do in a SharePoint project and is ABSOLUTLELY NOT a technical task … If you spend less than a week on this then you either are receiving great advice or are likely to get into trouble down the line

Note that changing the User Interface in SharePoint is VERY HARD and any decent SharePoint redesign is going to cost £10k+ (we know of companies that have spent more than £50k). So stick to a few colour changes and images or invest in a predefined theme if you must.

Accept that SharePoint is huge – it’s not (just) a document management or a team collaboration technology and it can address a very wide range of needs in a business. This means that no one person really understands it all and that no one can be expected to quickly get up to speed on it in order to make informed capability, specification and project decisions.

Don’t accept the defaults when building the servers. E.g. SQL Server defaults will result in autosizing sizing and growth settings that will make the server work flat out just to keep up with resizing

Don’t Believe everything Microsoft (and their partners, even us) say. It might be legally true, but no one knows it all and just because a thing can be done with SharePoint doesn’t mean it should (for example, websites usually should NOT be built in SharePoint, in our opinion).

My point here is not that these remarks are correct or incorrect, but that deploying SharePoint is not something you can expect to do overnight just because it works great with the latest Office. Here’s another quote from the same guys:

It has been our observation that many, and perhaps most, SharePoint projects in the English (as distinct from Scottish, Welsh etc) National Health Service fail to a greater extent than they succeed.

which is a sobering remark.

It’s also worth noting that going for hosted SharePoint will solve some but not all of these problems. On the other hand, part of Microsoft’s appeal these days is that you can do everything on premise – that may seem more of a disadvantage, but it is an attraction for organisations that don’t yet buy the cloud hype.

linux, microsoft, sharepoint

Linux users will need a Microsoft Office license to use Office Web Apps

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I spoke to Jeff Teper, Microsoft’s Corporate VP of the Office Business Platform, who runs the SharePoint engineering group. I asked him to clarify something has puzzled me: the licensing for Office Web Apps. From a technical point of view, Office Web Apps is an add-on for SharePoint; it does not require the paid-for SharePoint Server (success to Microsoft Office SharePoint Server), but neither is it free – you may only install it if you have a volume license for Microsoft Office.

That much I understood; but what are the implications for businesses who have a volume license that does not cover everyone in the organisation? For example, I might purchase 100 volume licenses for the people who need to run Microsoft Office, but have another 50 who have OEM Office, or Open Office, or who don’t need to run Office at all. Some may be running Linux, on which Microsoft Office is not supported at all – though some have it working using WINE. Another scenario is where you have a SharePoint installation published to partners over the Internet. Is it OK to let them use Office Web Apps?

“The simple answer is that you do need a volume license for each user”, said Teper, though he added, “Our volume licensing is tailored to each customer, we will do specific things for each customer’s need. But the blanket statement is that its available for volume license customers per user.”

So would a Linux user need a license for Microsoft Office in order to access Office Web Apps, even though they couldn’t run the desktop version?

“Yes, that’s our default licensing.”

I also asked about how the licensing works. Is it enforced technically, so that the server refuses connections if they exceed the licensed number, or is it on a trust basis? Teper answered somewhat mysteriously:

“We provide volume license customers the tools to track that.”

My guess is that it is essentially done on trust (though perhaps subject to audit) but I couldn’t get Teper to confirm that.

Still, it seems to me that this licensing requirement will inhibit organisations from taking full advantage of what the Office Web Apps can do. The advantage of a web-based solution is that anyone can access it, both within an organisation, and beyond it if you choose to publish it on the Internet. I doubt there will be much enthusiasm for buying Office licenses for Linux users, though maybe the kind of organisation that has a full Microsoft-platform deployment does not have internal Linux users anyway.

In mitigation, it’s worth mentioning that Microsoft is also making Office Web Apps available for free, through Live Skydrive and Office Live Workspace. If you use those services, anyone with a Live ID can be given access to your Office Web App documents.