Woowar :: Microsoft Office: is the giant falling?

Category microsoft openoffice symphony
I just received an email from the UK magazine ComputerWeekly with the results of a recent survey conducted by them amongst UK businesses to look at trends in desktop software.

Of course, it's just a survey, and the one thing you can guarantee about a survey is that it's wrong (it's simply a question of how wrong) ... but nevertheless it does make interesting reading. Specifically ...

Although 93% of businesses use some sort of Microsoft Office version as their main desktop productivity software at the moment, only 66% believe that Microsoft Office 2010 will be their next rollout.
The remaining businesses - one in every three - expect to see OpenOffice (13%), Google Apps (3%) or 'Other' (17%) as their next step.
That represents a 30% fall-off rate for existing Microsoft customers - an extraordinary change if it comes true
The 17% who think that their next move won't be Microsoft Office, nor Google Apps, nor OpenOffice, are interesting. What are they thinking? Perhaps it just shows that there is a serious amount of appetite in the marketplace for something 'other' than Microsoft's over-priced and over-complicated Office tools, but that nothing has - yet - risen to fully meet people's unvoiced (and probably largely un-thought-through) expectations. Somehow I doubt they're all scrabbling to roll out Lotus Symphony, although doubtless that is becoming a worthy runner.

The survey also showed that only 48% of companies have any plans whatsoever to roll out Windows 2010, with over 50% saying that they have "no plans". Whether that means they won't, or simply that the couldn't answer the question properly because they haven't yet decided when, is a question worth answering. But, once again, it seems to demonstrate a cooling of attitude towards Microsoft's product direction (and possibly pricing model).

Some 45% of businesses who don't already use open-source software said that they would definitely be using it in future, albeit mostly only for 'some functions'. Again, the "uncle Bill knows best" approach that dominated throughout the 1990s and early 2000s seems to be dissipating. This can only be a good thing, for business, for competition, and for innovation.

The survey summary can be seen in PDF form here.