Microsoft Office Systems Strategy - circa 1991
One of the documents admitted in Microsoft's Iowa lawsuit is an Office Systems Strategy Backgrounder memo from September 1991. One of the things that struck me as I read this was how relevant much of it still is. See the sections:
- What is the vision guiding our Office strategy?
- What will a typical system look like?
- What areas should our Office strategy cover?
Even in 1991, the concept behind SharePoint was spelled out on page 3 of this document - "The design center is no a longer [sic] a single user on a desktop. Instead it is a workgroup that is working together on a network." Of course, back then, Lotus Notes was the application making all the noise in the collaboration space.
The core product suite defined on page 5 is still highly relevant today - "To meet the needs of the customer, we would need to provide the following product components: Word Processor, Spreadsheet, Presentation package, Project Management, E-mail, Calendar/Scheduler, Workflow, Conferencing, Document Library and Database."
Yep - that pretty much sums up the 2007 Microsoft Office system.
Judging from the goals enumerated in the section "What are the goals of our Office strategy?", I'd say they've been pretty successful!
One side note on programmability. First from page 6:
"Programmability Strategy: We need to articulate how we will enable applications to expose their functionality and how we plan to provide a consistent programming environment to enable users and developers to develop custom applications."
On Page 13:
"Ease of Programmability: The ease with which companies can develop solutions will determine not only determine [sic] our competitiveness with respective [sic] to other Office solutions but will also determine the success of the product in meeting specific customer needs. Products like Notes have become successful because departments have been able to develop custom solutions and have not had to rely on MIS to deliver the solutions."
While for a period of time, Microsoft nailed these objectives, I'm not convinced that the same is true today. In the past, the message was a rifle. Today we have a shotgun. I don't get the sense that the future is well defined, I don't see the single-minded guidance that once prevailed, and I'm weary of departments being increasingly dependent on MIS to deliver solutions.