August 19, 2004

Microsoft Office - Microsoft wants to do even more

Microsoft Office has a lock on the desktop productivity market. Word, Excel, and Powerpoint are all staples of business offices.

Microsoft knows this (as do you).

NY Times writes Microsoft is now pursuing a strategy to transform Office from a bundle of programs on personal computers into a family of software that can put Microsoft's technology deeper into the operations of corporate data centers. As Steven A. Ballmer, Microsoft's chief executive, wrote in an e-mail message to employees last month, "Our biggest growth opportunity is with our existing base of Office users."

Microsoft is banking on the Office initiative to help it fend off the challenge from open-source software and other competitors. But if the plan stumbles, Microsoft's hopes for sustained growth and greater profits could come under heavy pressure.

The logic of building on the Office franchise is not hard to see, given that it has more than 90 percent of the market for office software applications.

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