Online software war

For more than a decade, Microsoft Office has been hegemony in the field of text editing: office workers and computer users have used it to write letters, create spreadsheets .

But recently a new wave of software appeared online with additional efforts, and in some cases, replaced the basic tools of office workers.

Software like Numsum, Writely, Zimbra is part of a new generation of applications that look just like Office. They exist as internet services, not software installed on computers.

Future

According to some, this movement in the future may undermine the advantage of Microsoft Office. But with revenues of $ 11 billion a year, Microsoft Office is unlikely to have to worry too much. PowerPoint, Excel and Word are close tools for most people and they will be hard to give up.

However, as the internet grew further, the nature of computer use changed - something Microsoft admitted when it announced plans to develop online services to complement its software.

New software on the network has many similar characteristics. The first is their simple appearance, and ease of use.

This is different from a disadvantage of Office: too many functions in the product that most users actually use only a few of those functions.

Online software also takes advantage of cheap advantages to attract small businesses and individual users. Often their basic features are free, and the higher ones have to be paid. The software on this network also has an important common feature: the ability to share.

Usually, the only way to share information with colleagues is to send email attachments. But documents, if stored on a network server, can be used anywhere and anyone if they are allowed. At least in a short time, no such software can compete with Office.

In fact, most companies argue that their software can exist in parallel with Office, providing a different way of doing things online.