Microsoft Office

During today’s Professional Development Conference keynote, Ray Ozzie made an exciting announcement about a new way to view, edit, and collaborate with Excel. If you weren’t able to watch the keynote, feel free to check out the following links: PDC Keynote Video, Official MS Press Release, and Channel 9 Video.

In case you’re in a hurry, here’s the bottom line:

We are taking Excel Services, which many of you are already familiar with, and extending it beyond just viewing spreadsheets to authoring, editing and real-time collaboration in the browser!
You will be able to do light-weight editing including formula authoring, formatting and additional Excel features from within any browser: IE, FireFox, and Safari (it is just HTML and AJAX!)
The Excel web application will be available in two channels: as a consumer service offered via Office Live and as a business offering via either hosted subscription or volume licensing.
Any spreadsheets you author or edit online will be compatible with the Excel desktop client.

In part:

As part of the next release of Office, we’re announcing that Microsoft will deliver Office Web applications - lightweight versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote - through a browser. With these new applications, people can use a browser to create, edit, and collaborate on Office documents. What’s great is that this provides a consistent Office experience when and where our customers want it, regardless of whether they are accessing their Office documents through the PC, phone, or browser.

PressPass: What does this announcement mean for Microsoft?

Capossela: We are on a path to deliver all our technology as “software plus services,” and today is an important milestone in this journey. For more than 10 years, millions of workers have benefited from Microsoft cloud-based services, including Hosted Exchange, Outlook Web Access and Live Meeting. Earlier this year, we announced Microsoft Online, which businesses such as Coca-Cola Enterprises, Blockbuster, and Energizer are using to access Exchange and SharePoint over the Web. Last month, more than 1 million people turned to Office Live Workspace for sharing and collaborating over the Internet.

Viewing a Word document in Word Web application.
Click for hi-res version

Today in Los Angeles, we raised the stakes with Office Web applications. With this development, people can benefit from Office as a service on their browser, as a downloadable application on their phone, and as software on their PCs. This is the kind of flexibility that our software plus services approach makes possible, and is helping us deliver the kind of innovation that businesses and consumers expect from Microsoft.

PressPass: How will the Office Web applications benefit customers?

Capossela: Customers’ requirements have changed, as have their expectations of technology. While Office is synonymous with desktop productivity, the idea of “desktop” has

changed from a PC-centric notion to one in which people are empowered on the PC, on the phone, and with a browser.

Our customers don’t use one device, but rather several. They want a seamless, synchronized experience across those devices to help them work smarter, faster, and better. Office Web applications will make that a reality.