Stephen Elop is convinced that even in a world of free, browser-based productivity software, consumers and businesses will continue to pay for Office.
Microsoft will bow to reality with Office 2010, adding browser-based versions of Excel, Word, PowerPoint and OneNote. But in an interview with ZDNet UK's sister site, CNET News.com, the head of Microsoft's Business Division says there is still plenty of life in the full version.
"At the highest level, what we're able to put forward to our customers is not just the best productivity experience, but one that spans the PC, the browser environment, the web environment, services, and so forth, and the mobile device," Elop said. "So it's the best productivity experience across the PC, the mobile phone and the browser."
As for Google, Elop said most businesses still think of Google as a search company, or are just kicking the tyres on Google Docs. He shrugged off the fact that Google last week brought the products out of beta.
"I've heard that the word was dropped," Elop said. "I didn't notice that anything else had changed. So I don't know if the software suddenly got better, or they just changed the name."
He also said it is too soon to have an opinion on Google's recently announced Chrome OS. "We haven't seen it," he said. "We don't know anything other than what has been written in a blog."
In a wide-ranging interview, Elop shared more views on Google as well as his perspectives on Office, business software, and the broader economy.
Q: What are customers asking for from Office? What's the most common thing that large businesses ask you for when you're talking to them about Office?
A: You know, when you boil it all down, everything we do essentially in the division, when you're with a CEO or a CIO or whatever the case may be, the base conversation is about productivity. It's about how can you help me solve this problem, and that problem often is about the productivity of some aspect of their business, of something they're trying to achieve competitively, or whatever.
Certainly in today's economic setting, cost savings comes into it. How can you help me save money in getting what we need to get done? How can you help me solve these problems, but do so in a more cost-effective way?
You mentioned cost savings. How is the business environment relative to investment in software and other technology compared to, say, when we spoke in February?
You know, when we spoke in February, I think there were a lot of people who didn't know what was going on.
I think people may not agree as to what's going on in the economy right now. Everyone has different opinions. But at this point people have opinions. And because people have opinions about what's going on in their business or their part of the economy, on that basis they begin to make plans. The plans will be different than the plans they might have had six or nine months ago, but they can actually establish a plan, and therefore a budget, and decide, OK, in our business we're going to do this, we're going to invest in these ways, and so forth.
I don't want to say there's increased confidence as much as there is less ambiguity in people's minds. They've decided what it means to them.
Now, at Microsoft, you've heard Steve [Ballmer] talk a number of times about how we view what's happened as being a reset in the economy, that it's not a bounce back to the way things were, but things have reset, and things need to stabilise here even more, and then we'll see things begin to grow as increases in productivity in the economy kick in.
The product line-up that you guys are going to have going into next year, what does that add to your arsenal, particularly Office 2010?
I think at the highest level, what we're able to put forward to our customers is not just the best productivity experience, but one that spans the PC, the browser environment, the web environment, services, and so forth, and the mobile device.
When people look at Office 2010 in the broadest sense, and that's both the client applications, it's the services offerings, it's the server products, it's the web applications, all of those pieces together. Certainly what customers are recognising as they've had pre-briefings and the early experimentation with the products is that we're at some form of generational shift into this world of software plus services, and Office 2010, I think, is surprising people as it relates to the extent to which we've fully embraced software plus services.
How do you see the balance of web applications and desktop programs? You guys have obviously talked about [the fact] it's not just about putting Office in the browser. What are the kinds of things that you think are best done via the browser, what are the things that are best done in a desktop program, and how does that inform sort of the way you guys have designed those two products?
First of all, it's helpful to look at specific scenarios. I'll just use a personal example. I was at my parents' home recently, I needed to edit a document, I hadn't carted my PC around with me. I had my father's PC connected to the internet. I was able to use a web application...
