Microsoft today announced a new strategy to push its Office 2013 suite of products.

Faced with increased competition from Google, Microsoft said the company will launch an ‘Office’ online store that will help enterprises to purchase a range of its Office 365 products such as Word, Excel, Powerpoint and others.

Vision by Ballmer

This store is in addition to the existing ‘Windows’ store.

This, according to company executives, is a part of the vision outlined by CEO Steve Ballmer, who in July last year at the launch of Office 2013 said the company needs to take ‘bold steps’ in the world of computing.

Talking to Business Line at Tech Ed, Microsoft’s annual developers’ conference in Bangalore, Ramkumar Pichai, General Manager, Microsoft Office Division, Microsoft India, said the company taking a re-look at the way it sells Office software to individuals and enterprises globally.

“It is no longer a ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach and we are tailoring software based on requirements of users,” he said.

This has been extended to software developers who in the past had to buy certain versions of Microsoft software (such as .NET) to write codes. As an example, the company is offering Office 365 Developer edition freely for a limited period and there is no need to buy Visual Studio to develop certain software applications. Already, the Redmond-based company has announced a free Office 365 version to schools, universities and colleges to grow ecosystem beyond its existing billion user base.

To achieve this, the company is asking developers to develop apps and put them on the online store and share the rewards based on the number of people downloading software from the store.

Revenue sharing

According to Microsoft executives, 80 per cent of the revenues in the Office store will go to an app developer, which according to industry watchers is higher than companies such as Apple and Google. However, industry watchers are sceptic about this shift to online strategy.

“India requires a lot of hand holding and out of 40 million small businesses in India, the bulk of them are uncomfortable buying online,” said an analyst from an international research firm.

>venkatesh.ganesh@thehindu.co.in

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