SharePoint 2010 to deliver business Office Web Applications

Microsoft launches business Office 2010 office productivity suite and upgraded SharePoint 2010 collaboration platform

Upgrading SharePoint 2007 to SharePoint 2010 requires 64-bit server hardware

Microsoft officially launched new business versions of its office productivity suite Office 2010 and its collaboration platform SharePoint 2010 today.

The key new feature in SharePoint 2010 for Office 2010 suite users is the ability to roll out on-premise Office Web Applications (OWA).

OWA are cut down versions of the big four Office applications, Excel, OneNote, PowerPoint and Word, although Microsoft prefers to think of OWA as ‘lightweight’ versions of the full-featured locally installed applications.

With OWA, Microsoft is offering users the facility to collaborate, minimally edit and view documents through on-premise SharePoint 2010 portals.

However, firms wanting to roll out OWA, but still running 32-bit servers will need to upgrade their server infrastructure, because the 2010 version of Microsoft’s SharePoint server only runs on 64-bit hardware.

Analyst firm Quocirca service director Bob Tarzey said that this shouldn't be a problem for large enterprises, since most of them will already be running a 64-bit infrastructure.

But SMEs will be able to use this too, he argues: "They will be able to access server-embedded Windows SharePoint Services, or the hosted version of SharePoint [SharePoint Online] which means it's much easier to scale for them.”

"The reality is that the majority of businesses use Office tools, and although Google is pushing Microsoft in this area, it [Google] is actually a long way behind in the business market, " said Tarzey.

That Microsoft is still the leader in office productivity applications is backed up by analyst Forrester's Q1 2010 Global Desktop Innovation Online Survey.

The survey of 115 North American and European Enterprise and SMB collaboration and productivity decision-makers, showed 81 per cent of enterprises running Office 2007 and 78 per cent using Microsoft's collaboration platform SharePoint.

The Forrester survey also showed that a a third of its survey sample are planning to upgrade to Office 2010 within the next year, although 30 per cent said they had no plans to upgrade.

However, nearly half of respondents (49 per cent) said they would be implementing or upgrading to Microsoft SharePoint 2010 within the next year.

Forrester analyst Sheri McLeish writing in a blog post said the survey results looked good for Microsoft, "even though Google will be looking to use the Office 2010 launch to lure businesses that don't want to upgrade to Google Docs."

"Office will always be a safe choice for businesses, and one that remains popular with information workers who have little desire to have their tooling switched," added McLeish.