Web-based Office

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IBM on Monday is expected to announce new software intended to take on Microsoft in the market for desktop business applications.
The new software, which falls under IBM’s Lotus Workplace strategy, is a bundle that includes e-mail, word-processing, spreadsheet and database applications aimed at business users.

While Microsoft’s market-leading Office bundle works only on the Windows and Macintosh operating systems, IBM's new software is designed to be distributed and accessed through a Web server, and to be accessible from systems running Windows and Macintosh, as well as Linux, Unix and handheld devices, sources close to IBM said.

Steve Mills, the top executive at IBM’s software unit, is expected to announce the new software at a press conference in New York.

IBM has also rounded up support from other software makers, including Siebel Systems and PeopleSoft, which can make their Web-based business applications available through the new IBM software.

IBM hopes to sway customers to the Workplace software with a few key selling points, including ease of management, mobility and price. Since most of the work takes place on server-based software, Workplace software can be distributed and updated centrally. And unlike pure Web applications, the new software is designed to be used offline, so mobile users on laptops or handheld devices can connect, quickly access applications and disconnect to do work offline. When they connect, the Workplace software synchronizes their work with server-based applications.

The company plans to charge customers $2 per user per month for access to the software, plus the cost of server software, such as IBM’s WebSphere, needed to make the system work. IBM intends to make the bulk of its revenue from the new plan on sales of the server software.

Microsoft controls more than 90 percent of the desktop software market. In the past year, Sun Microsystems has made inroads with some business and government customers with its StarOffice and OpenOffice desktop software. Neither Microsoft nor Sun was immediately available to comment on the announcement.

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Source : http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104_2-5208998.html

This is good idea? Running software from your web browser? Could this be the start of new era for software? All the software on the server and users access them by a web browser?

Well having read the following, i think it is a move towards TCPA.

1. What is TC - this `trusted computing' business?

The Trusted Computing Group (TCG) is an alliance of Microsoft, Intel, IBM, HP and AMD which promotes a standard for a `more secure' PC. Their definition of `security' is controversial; machines built according to their specification will be more trustworthy from the point of view of software vendors and the content industry, but will be less trustworthy from the point of view of their owners. In effect, the TCG specification will transfer the ultimate control of your PC from you to whoever wrote the software it happens to be running. (Yes, even more so than at present.)

The TCG project is known by a number of names. `Trusted computing' was the original one, and is still used by IBM, while Microsoft calls it `trustworthy computing' and the Free Software Foundation calls it `treacherous computing'. Hereafter I'll just call it TC, which you can pronounce according to taste. Other names you may see include TCPA (TCG's name before it incorporated), Palladium (the old Microsoft name for the version due to ship in 2004) and NGSCB (the new Microsoft name). Intel has just started calling it `safer computing'. Many observers believe that this confusion is deliberate - the promoters want to deflect attention from what TC actually does.


2. What does TC do, in ordinary English?

TC provides a computing platform on which you can't tamper with the application software, and where these applications can communicate securely with their authors and with each other. The original motivation was digital rights management (DRM): Disney will be able to sell you DVDs that will decrypt and run on a TC platform, but which you won't be able to copy. The music industry will be able to sell you music downloads that you won't be able to swap. They will be able to sell you CDs that you'll only be able to play three times, or only on your birthday. All sorts of new marketing possibilities will open up.

TC will also make it much harder for you to run unlicensed software. In the first version of TC, pirate software could be detected and deleted remotely. Since then, Microsoft has sometimes denied that it intended TC to do this, but at WEIS 2003 a senior Microsoft manager refused to deny that fighting piracy was a goal: `Helping people to run stolen software just isn't our aim in life', he said. The mechanisms now proposed are more subtle, though. TC will protect application software registration mechanisms, so that unlicensed software will be locked out of the new ecology. Furthermore, TC apps will work better with other TC apps, so people will get less value from old non-TC apps (including pirate apps). Also, some TC apps may reject data from old apps whose serial numbers have been blacklisted. If Microsoft believes that your copy of Office is a pirate copy, and your local government moves to TC, then the documents you file with them may be unreadable. TC will also make it easier for people to rent software rather than buy it; and if you stop paying the rent, then not only does the software stop working but so may the files it created. So if you stop paying for upgrades to
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Full sourse here: http://www.againsttcpa.com/tcpa-faq-en.html

I think they realise that it will be difficult to sell Office products in the future and this maybe a way to bypass microsoft having a finger in everything that goes on a pc.

Take a look at what the future holds here: http://www.againsttcpa.com/index.shtml

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This is good idea? Running software from your web browser? Could this be the start of new era for software? All the software on the server and users access them by a web browser?

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god I hope not - I'm with Jinxy on this one - in certain ways TCPA stuff would be a nightmare - those links jinxy has provided are very good and I for one would not trust my data to anyone but me. I mean its not like I've got any world changing research or anything like that (well not on the computer anyway ;) ) but its the principle of it - I mean at least if your data goes blam then you know who to blame, yourself.

Z

Well I for one will not be able to sleep comfortably without my favourite paperclip?

Please have patience whilst I try to find the appropriate attachment :D

I will try to edit this post later

EDIT: attachment?

:D

I don't use word so I wouldn't know but does that actually do that?? :O

Nihil,

If i could just stop laughing, i'd post a reply.Oh **** i have.

You guy see it like the server was on the web. I see the server inside a LAN. Microsoft is really good for fat client software and moving away from that could be good or bad?