Microsoft’s New Strategy: Free Software

Software,
19
Jun 2015

Microsoft-Logo

Microsoft has always used a traditional way of marketing their products to customers until now. Here’s a look at Microsoft’s Free Software strategy.

The idea behind the strategy

With Microsoft dominating the desktop applications market for decades and charging customers for all of their products suites, why would they want to move away from their usual marketing method to offer free software?

It could be that in recent years, Microsoft has been falling behind Google and Apple, who’ve dominated their niche markets by offering their products and services free in return for ads or data. With smartphones becoming as ubiquitous today as PCs were in the 90s, Microsoft has had to step up their game to attract more users to their products. Their new strategy of offering free software is a step in aligning themselves to the competition and keeping up with the times.

Executing the strategy

Microsoft has recently offered a free version of Microsoft Office that can be used on the iOS platform. They’ve extended this to give Android devices free versions of Excel, Word and PowerPoint. In addition to this, they’ve also offered free licenses for Windows as well as Windows Phone for PC and mobile devices.

Reaching out to new markets

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Since they’ve acquired a number of mobile applications, they’ll also plan to offer these for free too. Some examples include free mobile apps such as an email app that is used with Android and iOS platforms acquiring a much larger user base than before. For example, an Android or iOS user, who may not use Microsoft software at all, would now be presented with the opportunity to try the software for free and use it.

Microsoft’s hope is that users will gain a beneficial experience from their software, enough for it to become indispensable to them. The free version will come with a whole host of features that will be very useful. Still, there will be some features that are held back from the free versions, which will be offered in the subscription plans.

Microsoft’s ecosystem

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Image courtesy of Counter Point Research

Microsoft is also looking to get users to experience a whole host of other products and services that are closely aligned with the free software offered by them.

This ecosystem of products and services is the perfect strategy that will entice users to sign up to their subscription plans. For example, by integrating Skype into Outlook, Microsoft plans to get users to become accustomed to Skype. Once they are familiar with the product, it’ll be easier for the user to upgrade within minutes of seeing the offer as well as the other paid features available through Skype.

In the same vein, users of Cortana are encouraged to use Bing, which will help draw them away from Google as a search engine.

For more ways to optimize your office software and productivity, contact your local IT professionals.

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Microsoft Office 2016 Preview: What you should know

Software, Uncategorized,
17
Jun 2015

office-2016

Microsoft Office 2016 has features that will benefit any office and business environment. Read our Office 2016 Preview to get an overview of what’s to come.

Microsoft Office has made a big impact in handling the nuances of small and big business document processing and management. With Microsoft Office 2016 being released, everybody is curious to know what features and enhancements it will bring to the work environment.

This version’s focus is definitely on simplifying things. Many features which had been missing in previous versions and were in great demand have now been added to MS Office 2016.

Preview of the Microsoft Office 2016 features

Here are some of the striking features and enhancements that have been included in Microsoft Office 2016:

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  • Word, Power Point and Excel finally get the data loss protection feature. Centralized sharing mechanisms have been built into these tools to help keep the office documents safe. Authoring policies can also be applied which gives a way to restrict and authenticate the use of documents. This feature was previously only available in Outlook, Share Point and One Drive. Due to popular demand it has now been brought over to Word, Power Point and Excel too.
  • Outlook has also been revamped to suit popular business requirements. Support of multi-factor authentication has been added, which scales up the security and integrity of official emails. The search functionality has been improved to a large extent which will make it easier for professionals to search for emails from huge folders or inboxes. Outlook’s performance has also been enhanced so that users don’t have to wait for their messages to download. In addition to the above, extra options related to mail storage has also been included.
  • Excel has added improvements related to accessibility using the keyboards. Vital diagrams like Pivot Tables can now be constructed with keyboard shortcuts which save a lot of time and adds precision.
  • Office will still continue to offer macros and add-ins, which have proven to be a great success in other versions. Since Microsoft feels that these features are designed to the best of their ability, there hasn’t been any updates or changes made to them.
  • Visio has also gone through an enhancement in this version. It can now accommodate Information Rights Management protection. So all Visio images and diagrams can be protected, irrespective of whether they are online or offline.

Along with the enhancements that this version will bring about, IT professionals can reap great advantage by using bandwidth management features. Not forgetting, much more flexibility and support in accessing and applying updates. Administrators will be able to manage users and give them designated rules to activate devices.

For more ways to update and improve your systems, contact your local IT professionals.

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