Each time you open a new Word file in Microsoft Word, from now
on, there won't be any need to save your work every few seconds, for fear of
losing all your data with a power cut or a computer hang. Google's newly
launched Cloud Connect toolbar for Microsoft apps, sits inside a MS Word,
Excel, or Powerpoint application.
Available for free download, the toolbar enables users to directly save
their MS Office work into Google's server farms located all over the world,
from any device. Google's strategy to embed its apps inside MS Office suite,
which forms almost a third of its $62 billion annual sales will be a direct
hit into Microsoft's prime bread source after Windows, if successful.
Once logged in to a Google account, the toolbar automatically keeps
saving any document being currently worked upon on to a Google server farm.
The catch is that your PC should once in a while be connected to the internet,
to get it synced with the cloud.
"We will keep documents on the cloud till eternity for a user, as long as
his or her Google account is active," Shan Sinha, Product Manager, Google Apps
told ET from Google's Mountain View headquarters. Won't saving a large amount
of private documents of users, create legal issues for Google? "All documents
are stored in an encrypted fashion, and only people with the document's
weblink would be allowed to view or edit," he says.
The Cloud Connect initiative by Google is a step ahead of its Docs
offering, which failed to pick up enthusiasm in many markets, as people are
still hooked on to MS Office applications. Microsoft holds almost 90% market
share in Office applications. The advantage Cloud Connect toolbar offers users
is that, once synced, all MS Office data sitting in a home or office PC, can
be accessed from anywhere in the world through iPads, smartphones or PCs.
" It's a conversion strategy, get people hooked on the capability so that
they move completely to Google Apps and stop paying for two licenses (one
Microsoft, one Google)," says Forrester analyst TJ Keitt.
Microsoft's Office applications generate a Google weblink for each
document saved on Google's servers, once embedded with a toolbar. For groups,
wanting to share work, Cloud Connect offers collaborative editing. All
revisions by each user of the document is saved.
"Every 5 seconds, someone in the world is downloading a cloud connect
toolbar, since it got launched on Feb 25th, this year," says Mr Sinha. "There
is no need for enterprises now to install costly Microsoft Office upgrades.
They can directly work and store on the cloud," he adds.
Google's strategy behind launching a Cloud initiative for MS Office, is a
direct challenge to Microsoft, and its supremacy in the world of Office
documents, which none have been able to challenge as yet. Open Office, Neo
Office, IBM Lotus Symphony have not been able to succeed in the market despite
being free.
"We also have our Office Live service on the cloud much before than
Google's offerings," says James Utzschneider, General Manager for Strategy in
Microsoft's Sales, Marketing, and Services Group at Redmond. He defends the
desktop computing model as well. "A large number of PC users in the world are
unconnected. Though cloud is becoming a phenomenon, a large number of users
will be desktop based." Mr Utzschneider leads a team responsible for
Microsoft's worldwide marketing efforts around open source and emerging
technologies.
Microsoft's sales from its Office system has been declining since two
years, from about $18 billion in 2008 to $17.7 billion in 2010. Already in its
annual financial statement, Microsoft has claimed competition from Google as a
risk factor to its Office sales.
"Competitors to the Microsoft Office system may be from companies such as
Google, Adobe, Apple, Corel, IBM, Novell, Oracle, Red Hat and Zoho. Google
provides a hosted messaging and productivity suite that competes with our
Office, Exchange, SharePoint, including its fast enterprise search
technology," it had said in the review.
