Read this link before reading my comments here:
I believe that this (even more than the 18000 announced last week – most of whom are at Nokia) will force a HUGE reorg of Microsoft before the end of 2014 or at the latest the end of their Fiscal 2015 (June 30, 2015).
I know a lot of “V-“s there and have worked with them for ten years now. Take all of them away on Jan 1, 2016 and the company will simply stop. Like after the Rapture ….
So watch out for something BIG before then.
But this cannot be good for the parts of Office that I mostly care about (Excel and Access, data connectivity and automation) as this may just be a great opportunity to further the diminishment of Excel and Access under cover of the reorg. I think there are few left in there who will speak up now for client versions or for “real” automation and the great BI “story” will likely get seriously watered down.
The insecurity in the Office team that this will bring can only mean more cuts and the remaining staff focused even more exclusively on “Office in the Cloud”. Hmmmm …
It’d be nice to hear someone other than just Tim Rodman to comment on this 🙂 ,,
Dick Moffat's Spreadsheet and BI Blog 
Thanks for the shout out. I was thinking the same thing 🙂
🙂
Tim Rodman’s a loud mouth! ;-)))))
I dont know what the effect on office will be. I find office something of a contradiction. In many ways its made improvements in recent times, but equally I look at some parts of it agast. The UI seems to get harder and harder to use with each version. I’m beginning to just lose interest.
They have done nothing with VSTO/VBA/Managed COM etc, VSTA was dead on arrival. Nor is there any clear strategy on what the way forward is. (Not really!)
The cloud is all well a good, but It is, and has been from day one my belief, that the cloud will infact just be a data share. There is never a situation in which a hosted app, will out perform a native one, and for many many many real world applications performance really does matter. We may get force to the cloud, but I can see it being a choice. So MS’s investment in cloud office might never payoff…. Time will tell. Sure there are a lot of users for whom the online version will be fine, but really, there are just as many for whom it will not be, I’m not just talking Automation here, I mean just basic operations….
All this must leave a gap for OOo or something similar to make a play in the desktop space, a solid grid, charts and pivots, plus, a nice BASIC decent forms and controls, data access, and your away….. Basically Excel 2003 ;-)))
I would love to see VSTA or something coming to Excel/Office, but I’m not holding my breath!
Is that a fat lady I can see?
Yes he is isn’t he 🙂 And I’m glad he is or all I’d have is lurkers …
“The cloud is all well a good, but It is, and has been from day one my belief, that the cloud will infact just be a data share. There is never a situation in which a hosted app, will out perform a native one, and for many many many real world applications performance really does matter.”
Nailed it !!! EXACTLY what I have been saying for several years. I just don’t see why what’s most important is competing in the Internet space against their mortal enemies (Google) rather than working to provide more and more of what businesses (and consumers) REALLY need on the platform they control and that everyone already has – Windows (?). It boggles the mind.
“They have done nothing with VSTO/VBA/Managed COM etc, VSTA was dead on arrival. Nor is there any clear strategy on what the way forward is. (Not really!)”
I was in the early discussion before it was called VSTO or VSTA at Redmond on a council and was really excited about VSTA. But somehow the idea of having the code inside the file became radioactive. I assume that was because they wanted to get Visual Studio devs doing Excel development and decided that the traditional Excel VBA market was too uncool. That was NEVER going to work IMHO because VS devs have ZERO interest in Excel and I said so LOUDLY. I have been proven very right on that but they still haven’t accepted that truth. So Excel automation floats in a kind of never-never land and it looks to me like it may simply disappear … which is hard to believe – but I’ve seen a lot of stupid things in my loooong career – after all I am a bitter old man remember 😉 ..
Dick