Software Features Transform Web Services from Boxed Software Patterns

Lead: Today, foreign media published an article saying that with the vigorous development of cloud computing technology, a few years to conduct an update of the boxed software model has been increasingly difficult to meet the rapid needs of users, so the major companies are beginning to switch to the network The form of services to provide software functionality, and even the flagship box office software has also been actively involved in this trend to speed up the update rate.

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Accelerate the update

Since its release in 1989, Microsoft has been controlling Office upgrade cycles for about three years. These updates include interface revisions, new Word fonts and Excel formats, as well as fixing bugs, others that are easy to spot, and others that are hard to detect. But large and small, these updates are sold through well-packaged CDs, usually for individuals or businesses that have just purchased a new PC.

This model has been working very well and is still the case: in 2012, the total number of global Office users reached 1 billion people. In the $ 24 billion Microsoft business revenue, the office software contributed more than half. But as Office sales shifted from boxed software to Office 365's cloud subscription service, Microsoft also began to rethink how software updates are released and will dramatically accelerate the upgrade cycle.

According to the US market research firm IDC estimates, global PC sales this year may be reduced by 7.8% year on year, the worst record. This means that the new PC will not be able to continue to drive software sales. Not only that, Office is also facing fiercer competition. Google Docs can already replace Word and Excel to some extent, and Dopbox, Box and Jive Software are challenging Office SharePoint document management and collaboration software.

These rookies have adopted the cloud computing model without exception. Google has cumulatively updated more than 100 times since Google launched its Google Drive cloud storage service in April 2012. Dropbox and Box are said to be updated daily. Google spokesman Tim Drinan said more than 5 million businesses use Google Apps every day. Depending on the needs, Google updates frequency from several times a month to several times a week. Delinan also said the company offers corporate customers the option of allowing them to receive updates only on a regular basis, so as not to over-remunerate them frequently. Box said the company has more than 150,000 business users.

Organizations that adopt the auto-update model can respond more quickly to user frustration and changes in demand, and cloud computing software does not need to download and install supplemental files locally. In contrast Microsoft boxed software users, you must often download the patch in order to fix the vulnerability. Melissa Webster, IDC analyst, said: "Microsoft understands this threat, and in today's technology industry, 3 years is almost the entire lifecycle of a product."

Completely transformed

Microsoft launched Office 365 on cloud computing two years ago, and Jeff Teper, the company's vice president, said that over the past year the company has changed its culture and moved closer to Internet companies. A year ago, 80% of engineers at the Office Servers and Services group engaged in large-scale updates that had been released in a few years, with only 20% working on the development of Office cloud computing products. Now is the opposite.

Tepper said Office 365 users receive monthly updates, and will soon accelerate to once a week. Only a handful of analysts four years ago, the Office cloud computing team has now scheduled dozens of people to track user satisfaction in real time.

Tepper calls this change "Yammer's Way." In other words, this is a shift that Microsoft implemented after it acquired Yammer, a corporate social networking collaboration tool, in July 2012. Yammer is updated twice a week, and the team has helped Microsoft recruit many Office data analysts. Adam Pisoni, co-founder of Yammer, is the newly appointed general manager of the Office division.

"This is a complete shift to the entire company," said Bobby Kishore. He has been with Microsoft for 18 years and currently oversees the engineering and operations of the Office 365 department.

Office 365 now has annual revenues of $ 1 billion, but the business has evolved to alienate some business users. Although this model is handy, users may be confused by frequent updates. "While a lot of people are excited about this quick update, there's also the risk," says Wes Miller, an analyst at Directions on Microsoft, an independent consulting firm. "Many users like it this way, but there are also Many users do not like it. "

Microsoft's own research also confirmed this view. Only one-fifth of the 150 top-tier customers surveyed in 2010 were willing or planning to use online software. Tepper said the company decided to ignore these signals and continue pushing forward the development of Office 365. "We do not want to get into danger even if the user keeps us a bit slower," he said.

Microsoft Office said that Microsoft's boxed software will continue to be available to those who resist Office 365 and its rapid-update model, but most of the team's efforts turn to web services. "Microsoft has always won the trust of users so far, those who are reluctant to enter the cloud users still willing to trust Microsoft.No matter Google or Box, other competitors do not have this trust," said Pisoni.

Raman Padmanabhan, chief information officer at Xerox Enterprise Services, already has an understanding of Microsoft's rapid-update model, which he said will support the product as long as the product is good enough. "The key is still to look at service and quality.You have to achieve a certain quality, or is dead-end," he said.