When Nadella took office seven years ago, he emphasized
immediately that the future was in the cloud. At the time, it was an
interesting but understandable ambition. Azure was killing it, services were
continuing to grow, and it was obvious that Microsoft was positioned as the
dominant player in the space. Everyone took what he said a little bit
differently though. We all kind of knew what he meant, but not exactly.
In 2021, the cloud is doing way more than it was doing when Satya
stepped in. This year, Microsoft hasn’t just added powerful cloud features to
its existing platforms, it has taken everything to the cloud, including Windows
itself, the bread and butter of the company. Office has been in the cloud for
years, but it's cleaner than ever now. Xbox has been promising cloud features
since the launch of the Xbox One eight years ago, but now with Xcloud, it's
finally a reality. Everything Microsoft does is in the cloud now.
Everything.
Its a shift we can all claim we saw coming, but to be honest, I couldn’t
have imagined it happening this cleanly. During the highs and lows of the last
five years, Microsoft has shown consistent, steady progress in their vision of
the cloud, and barring a couple of security breaches (who doesn’t have those,
these days?) they somehow haven’t really pissed off most of their customers.
It’s surprising that no one has climbed on top of the hill and shouted it to
the masses yet, but Microsoft has once again won in the business world, and
looking ahead, they’re stronger than ever.
No one likes learning new systems, but the comfort and familiarity
of Office in the cloud is astonishing. When I committed in 2021 to switching my
file keeping over to Office online, I expected to have to fight with it more. I
didn’t expect to actually prefer the UI over the one built into my desktop. The
interface of Office online is exactly what it needs to be, without the extras
that most people don’t use but a few people really need.
Put simply, Office online is cleaner than its desktop counterpart.
Not just the UI, but the bloat. As much as Windows has evolved over the last
few decades, the fundamentals of file organization have been the same since the
90’s. File Explorer is essential to Windows, as well as the way it operates,
but its function allows it to become a cluttered mess through everyday use.
Keeping a clean file system takes active, intentional work in Windows.
Installing a new app, even in Windows 10, will often create a folder in my
Documents folder without any input from me. Sure, I can hide it, or manually
place it somewhere I would prefer, but if we are honest with ourselves a new
operating system released in 2021 would be criticized for this. When a person
uses any computing device, they expect the app they’re installing to do the
organization for them, in a way that they like, without them having to think
about it. Yes, mobile apps normalized this, and it's a good thing too, because
the new way is better.
Microsoft putting Office and Windows in the cloud allows for
cleaner file organization for normal, everyday users. If Microsoft incorporated
Onedrive subtly enough, I doubt most normal people would have any use for File
Explorer. Onedrive does everything most working professionals would want from
their computer. The organization isn’t the only aspect that is beneficial here
though.
I only use about a dozen of the apps built into Windows, and I
would call myself a power user as well as a Microsoft fan. So if I as a fan am
only using a fraction of the stuff that is built into Windows, why can’t these
stock apps be deleted? I won’t belabor the point, plenty of people have been
writing about this for years. I bring it up because Office online doesn’t have
Paint. The fresh start that Onedrive and the rest of the suite has afforded Microsoft
is a breath of fresh air for their user base. Today, the web browser is the
default, necessary app on the computer, so much so that it can get away with
being the only app open, and a professional can still get all of their work
done. Many of the highest quality applications that professionals use are cloud
based. Google understood this very clearly, and they used that idea to justify
ChromeOS. It was a genius, forward thinking move. We were all moving in that
direction anyways, and it provided incentive for the industry to double down
and keep moving in that direction. Now, Microsoft users are benefitting from
it. As Edge has adopted Chromium, Microsoft has now levelled the playing field
for their users, making cloud computing a much easier default. Since cloud apps
have become the default, Office Online doesn’t need to have thirty apps that
most people don’t use. If a user wants a particular tool that isn’t included as
part of the “Office” package, they can just open a new tab. They have access to
the tool they want without the baggage of installation packages and UI clutter.
There is still plenty of work to be done. The platform in general
just isn’t as snappy as Google’s G Suite. The big apps like Word and Excel are
missing plenty of tools, and of course the offline counterparts of the apps
just feel better. It's a curious thing that Microsoft isn’t adding these tools
in at a faster pace. It could be because the users they care about are running
Windows anyways, and these apps all run great even on budget machines. Office
online, for now, only needs to be good for Chromebook users, and those users
probably aren’t bothering to use Microsoft software anyways. For now, as we are
still in the early days of the cloud transition, its enough that Microsoft
absolutely nailed the file system in Onedrive. The file system is fundamental
on any computing platform, and it shows a promising future for cloud
productivity going forward.
No comments:
Post a Comment