Study finds the merely Office applications are still in used daily is Outlook, which is terrible news for Microsoft.
So Microsoft won’t be pleased to see this new survey from SoftWatch. In a 3 month research involving 148,500 employees at 51 global companies, SoftWatch discover that 7 in 10 employees were barely using Office, and those who did just used it to sight documents or for very light editing. The report is available as a PDF.
Windows and Office: Microsoft has 2 cash cows. They assist offset losers like Bing and Windows Phone and give the huge profits that the non-sexy groups, like tools and server applications, don’t provide.
On standard, employees spent about 48 minutes per day using Microsoft Office. About two thirds of that time was spent on Microsoft Outlook, checking and responding to email. Excel was next, with just eight minutes of usage per day.
The study divided users into important users, light users, viewers, and inactive users. A full 30% of employees never used Excel or Word or used it only to view documents sent to them.
PowerPoint, the leader of presentations, has been knocked down to minimal use. The research found only about one in 19 users could be described as heavy users.
Now, it needs to be noted that SoftWatch sells analytics products specially geared toward serving a corporation determine whether moving some staff from more costly licenses like Microsoft Office to cheaper applications like Google would help reduce expenses. SoftWatch is also a Google Applications reseller.
So they have a point when they say transitioning light Office users to Google Applications can save a company up to 80% to 90% on their Microsoft licensing cost, but they also have a dog in that fight.
And of course, Microsoft has made its own shift with Office, transitioning many clients to the on-demand version, Office 365. Since Microsoft changed how it breaks out its income, we can’t determine whether Office sales are down from last year.
Obviously my observation is skewed, but one thing SoftWatch didn’t give details is where all those Office users go. If they have indeed abandoned Word and Excel and Powerpoint, what are they using in its place? That is something every body would like to know.
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