Microsoft's Office 365 For Government Heralds New Google Fight

Nerval's Lobster writes "In a bid to expand the reach of its cloud services, Microsoft has introduced Office 365 for Government, which features the same cloud-based productivity tools as Office 365 but stores data in a segregated community cloud. Google and Microsoft have been locked in vicious battle over the past few years to score cloud contracts for government agencies. Microsoft hopes its support of standards such as ISO 27001, SAS70 Type II, HIPAA, FERPA, and FISMA will help to give it an edge in winning those contracts."

Re:I'm hoping for microsoft

[The MAZZTer]

As a consultant who works on projects for govt, I hate Office 2007 and it's "collaboration" features which are pretty much non-existant. I would love to use Google Docs but we cannot due to the proprietary nature of our work. I'm pretty sure there's an Enterprise edition of Docs that can run more locally but I work for a Big Company (TM) so getting such software is probably impossible. I'm just waiting for Office 2011, which I THINK they're rolling out on the new Win 7 machines. Still running XP personally.

Re:I'm hoping for microsoft

[PCM2]

As a consultant who works on projects for govt, I hate Office 2007 and it's "collaboration" features which are pretty much non-existant.

You mean your clients haven't paid for the collaboration capabilities. With the right version of the suite, it offers both Groove-based collaboration and collaboration via SharePoint Server. In fact, all Office 365 really offers in this department is a hosted instance of SharePoint, but you still have to set it up how you want it. Funny thing about electronic collaboration tools, though -- if nobody else is going to use them, then there's no point in you using them, either.

I'm just waiting for Office 2011, which I THINK they're rolling out on the new Win 7 machines.

Office 2011 is a Mac version. You mean either Office 2010 or the version that will be coming Any Day Now.

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[hawguy]

As a consultant who works on projects for govt, I hate Office 2007 and it's "collaboration" features which are pretty much non-existant.

You mean your clients haven't paid for the collaboration capabilities. With the right version of the suite, it offers both Groove-based collaboration and collaboration via SharePoint Server. In fact, all Office 365 really offers in this department is a hosted instance of SharePoint, but you still have to set it up how you want it. Funny thing about electronic collaboration tools, though -- if nobody else is going to use them, then there's no point in you using them, either.

What is this Sharepoint based collaboration? When our Sharepoint admin said we were going to get collaboration for Office Docs via Sharepoint, I assumed it was live sharing like Google Docs, where multiple people could edit documents simultaneously, but what it turned out to be is a version control system - one person can check out and edit the doc while others can only get a read-only copy until that person checks it in.

Our admin said this is way Office collaboration works. Maybe I've been spoiled by Googl

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[Inda]

I can't tell you what version of Sharepoint we're using on Office 2007, but it's been nothing but poor version control since 2003, but now with added workflow! UserX has finished work on the document, would you like to...

Collaboration means employing someone to cut and paste all the sections and chapters into a 500 page report*.

Neat!

*I know master documents can be used. I even created a fully working template for this company. If only the rest of the non-tech workers could remember how styles work - there a

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[cavreader]

I would make one small recommendation which is to replace "hate" and "love" with "useful" and "non-useful" as it relates to your particular needs. "Love" and "Hate" often means those who decide what system or technology to use are going to use without even bothering looking at any alternatives they have seen software described using the word "hate". There are pluses and minuses to all software technology today and you are better served making an in-depth examination of all your choices before start labeling

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[Larryish]

MS + .gov + standards = HERP-A-DERP

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[Anonymous Coward]

Uh, office 2011 and win 7? Pretty tricky to run office 2011 on win 7...

Re:I'm hoping for microsoft

[Anonymous Coward]

Part of the insidious nature of lock-in is that there is a tendency of some users to see it as its own form of 'normal', with the more open options being the source of the pain or expected pain incident to breaking out of the lock-in.

Have you never considered that Google Docs can be edited in place and thus don't have to be passed around, or constantly uploaded and downloaded? Or that if one really insists on using a local editor, the standard-compliant ones virtually remove the iterative formatting errors incident to this kind of portability?

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[Anonymous Coward]

You're talking about desktop publishing, which Word is completely shit at, especially if you have to collaborate with other people.

Ninja????

[AliasMarlowe]

I agree with you that for simple uses the google docs is probably fine. but i'm in the ninja category, (hundred+ pages, tables, figs, headers, footnotes, track changes, comments), and this can't be duplicated in google docs, let alone bouncing files back and forth!

If you're using Word for 100+ page documents, you're likelier to be a time-waster than a Ninja. If those documents have much internal structure (10+ cross references per page), it's almost guaranteed. A real Ninja would use LaTeX.

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[shutdown -p now]

SP 2010 also lets documents be edited in place (it runs the same web apps as Office 365 does).

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[EnderDom]

The idea that Microsoft Office is like a knight in shining armour to lead all from the mire of formatting chaos neatly ignores the fact that it was Microsoft Office that led them all into it in the first place.

Re:I'm hoping for microsoft

[ozmanjusri]

The nightmare wrt google docs is writing a doc in word, passing it to google docs for somebody's editing,

That's the nightmare for ANYONE trying to inter-operate with Microsoft.

And since it's the result of deliberate efforts by Microsoft to fight open standards, it should result in them being banned from government tenders.

http://www.adjb.net/post/Microsoft-Fails-the-Standards-Test.aspx [adjb.net]
http://www.consortiuminfo.org/standardsblog/index.php?topic=20051116124417686 [consortiuminfo.org]
http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/2012/04/1how-microsoft-fought-true-open-standards-i/index.htm [computerworlduk.com]

Re:I'm hoping for microsoft

[Sez Zero]

Yes, because using a different program to read and write a Microsoft .doc is so utterly complex we all might as well give up.

Re:I'm hoping for microsoft

[Dcnjoe60]

well, you're exactly right. if your word file is a grocery list, then it doesn't matter if its .txt, .docx, or whatever. But when your files start to get extraordinarily complex (hundred+ pages, tables, figs, headers, footnotes, track changes, comments), then translating from .docx to something else will be a mess and you might as well give up.

Maybe that's the strongest reason for them not to be in proprietary formats.

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[noh8rz3]

again, you're absolutely right. It would be awesome if somebody made an open format where all these complex features would be 100% portable. in the meantime, my firm bills by the hour, and I have a fixed budget. so every hour my team spends futzing with formatting is an hour we dont spend on actual work. so for this reason i mandate office 2007 / 2010 for all participants.

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[funkyjam]

Exactly, we need a standard format kind of like HTML for web pages. Once we have that then every tool for editing those documents will render everything exactly the same and all our problems will be solved! I know we had some problems with browsers, but it's gonna be different with document editing software, I swear.

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[Mabhatter]

Technically if you are doing THAT much formatting you should be using Pagemaker or LaTex. That is what journals and print houses use... MS Word is just a fancier toy compared to those.

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[noh8rz3]

that's the rub, isn't it. I'm not an editor or formatter. I'm a content creator. My goal is to spend 99% of my time creating content and 1% of my time editing. Word is a great tool for content creators. pagemaker is a great tool for editors. latex is a great tool for... grad students?

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[Anarchduke]

If you are only spending 1% of the time editing the content you create, I shudder to think of how bad your content must suck.

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[noh8rz3]

Don't be obtuse. I mean copy editing and layout. The kind of stuff you pay somebody $20/hr to do, and in a year or two will farm out piecemeal.

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[poetmatt]

You'd be surprised how easily people learn google docs vs office. It's a matter of magnitudes difference in how easy it is to teach people google docs, not to mention that so many more people have gmail than hotmail it's just making life easier.

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[JazzLad]

Just an anecdote, but everyone I know with a Hotmail account has had it forever & just uses it as a spam account now. In other words, numbers aren't everything.

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[noh8rz3]

my comment isn't about the simple-use cases which admittedly are 50%+ of all users. But when your files start to get extraordinarily complex (hundred+ pages, tables, figs, headers, footnotes, track changes, comments), then it's not just a matter of teaching google docs vs. office. also, umm, at 99% of workplaces they don't use google gmail, they use outlook. so using office is making life easier.

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[poetmatt]

99% of workplaces don't use google gmail?

You'd be surprised what every single employee does on their computer. I can say with absolute certainly that google mail is heavily used at any employment location for personal mail anyway, unless it's explicitly blocked.

Re:I'm hoping for microsoft

[Dcnjoe60]

As a consultant who works with govt often, I really really hope that microsoft wins this battle. Right now all our document production is office based, and if we need to account for an entirely new office suite (google docs) then it's another magnitude of (nonbillable) complexity.

If I understand what you are saying, it is to keep using a broken system, because fixing it is too much of a pain. I would normally expect to hear that from politicians, but not the consultants themselves.

What I would like to see is the government demand open formats so that they aren't locked in to any one vendor's product because the conversion cost of the documents themselves is too high.

Re:

[noh8rz3]

again, you're absolutely right. the system is broken, and it would be awesome if somebody else fixed it. in the meantime, my firm bills by the hour, and I have a fixed budget. so every hour my team spends futzing with formatting is an hour we dont spend on actual work. so for this reason i mandate office 2007 / 2010 for all participants.

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[geek]

You should be fired for propagating the problem instead of solving it.

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[noh8rz3]

no, i should be promoted for focusing on business opportunities rather than wasting energy on things that don't provide revenue. someone else can solve this problem.

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[Anarchduke]

Or you could find an actual working solution then you won't have to waste your valuable time limping along with a broken system. And I've used word long enough that if your people are using word for 8 hours a day, I can almost guarantee they are futzing around trying to keep word from futzing their formatting over.

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[noh8rz3]

We _have_ a working solution. It's not perfect, but it's our best option given the costs of switching. Somebody else can solve the world's ills I.e. lack of word processor interoperability.

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[noh8rz3]

wow, I'm not sure how I could be modded down -1 redundant when I have fp! moderation fail. lash out much?

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[s.petry]

Probably because you keep repeating the same thing in every reply. Maybe you need to understand what redundant means?

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[noh8rz3]

yes, my replies have been a little redundant because people keep making branching comment sub-threads on the same sub-topics. But my first post isn't redundant! see, I do know what rudundant means...

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[Anarchduke]

and yet you are surprised you were down-voted for being redundant. too bad there isn't a -1 dumb-ass option.

Re:

[noh8rz3]

Jesus you're stalking me. You're being purposefully obtuse so let me repeat slowly. My _first post_ was marked redundant almost immediately. My subsequent posts, although covering the same topics (because people like you were chasing me through the thread) were not marked redundant. Just admit it - you hate Microsoft, and you hate anybody who says anything nice about them. Even if it's logical and supported.

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[cpu6502]

Why is the first post modded -1 redundant?
Stupid moderators.

FIPS

[Dr. Tom]

I like how FIPS-140 isn't mentioned as a supported standard.
Yeah, use our cloud, it's probably secure.

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[hawkinspeter]

None of them?

At least it won't happen here

[Gonoff]

I am in the UK and anything based in the USA, or controlled by US companies is by default insecure.

Sorry guys but anything your spooks think they can get away with fooling around with is not suitable for anything remotely confidential. That won't stop some crook who happens to work stealing it, as happened in NZ but we have to at least try.

And that is before we get into your commercial 'confidentiality' practices...

Perhaps you guys might consider offshoring your secure storage to somewhere with some decent Information Governance regulations.

Re:At least it won't happen here

[tlhIngan]

I am in the UK and anything based in the USA, or controlled by US companies is by default insecure.

Sorry guys but anything your spooks think they can get away with fooling around with is not suitable for anything remotely confidential. That won't stop some crook who happens to work stealing it, as happened in NZ but we have to at least try.

And that is before we get into your commercial 'confidentiality' practices...

Perhaps you guys might consider offshoring your secure storage to somewhere with some decent Information Governance regulations.

Actually, that's why Microsoft created the private cloud version of Office365 (the "for Government" part). Right now, if any country chooses it, there's no guarantee where data is stored. It was one egg-in-face moment when Microsoft announced that Google doesn't guarantee your data is stored locally, then realized the same applied to it.

This is an attempt to rectify that - letting and ensuring that data is stored where you want it to be stored.

It's a big problem because yes, any data stored on a US machine is subject ot US laws, where even Canadian companies dealing with the Harper Government have to ensure that the data doesn't leave Canadian soil (yes, storing on a US server counts).

It's one of those more obvious errors about the cloud and government that you'd think the cloud providers would've thought of...

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[recoiledsnake]

> It was one egg-in-face moment when Microsoft announced that Google doesn't guarantee your data is stored locally, then realized the same applied to it.

You can stay off the cloud with Microsoft Office and run your own Sharepoint, Exchange for collaboration. Google doesn't offer such a solution. So I don't know what's the egg-in-face about it.

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[beamin]

You can bet it won't be to a country whose cops are working for Rupert Murdoch.

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[cavreader]

Just storing something that requires outside internet access and data storage is insecure compared against storing data locally. If you think all US developed software is insecure you are free to build your own system, nothing is stopping you. And what the hell has the UK developed that even comes close to US software companies like Apple and MS?

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[s.petry]

What you point at in the UK is the same thing we in the US point at when dealing with "Cloud". No matter what the vendor says, when the data is not stored locally there is a huge amount of risk.

One of the reasons I ended up leaving my last employer was that they were insistent on allowing foreigners (India/China) access US controlled data. The amount of time spent trying to find loopholes, lobby congress for law changes, and trying to convince people it was a "great idea!" was disgusting.

I don't think man

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[CodeReign]

This is the truth. Here in Canada (well Quebec), there was a court battle where a Linux based company sued and won a case against the municipal government for not accepting or considering their contract offer in accordance with the legislation of that area. The city felt it would just be easiest to go with MS and not ever consider the alternatives.

Seriously?

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft hopes its support of standards such as ISO 27001, SAS70 Type II, HIPAA, FERPA, and FISMA will help to give it an edge in winning those contracts.

*laughs* Okay, seriously, you made half of those up, didn't you?

Hey, guys, look at my cloud app stuff! I'm compliant with ISO 8675309, TRS-80, THX 1138, HAL 9000, HERPY, DERPA, NIMROD, OSHA, FERMI, and CERN! Hee hee!

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[AngryDeuce]

But does it speak Bocce or the binary language of moisture vaporators?

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[davidbrit2]

You're going to have to be T-1000 certified if you want my dollars.

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[DaCurryman]

Sadly, in my line of work, I actually work with each one of those acronyms. Although SAS70 has been replaced by SOC 1/2/3.

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[colinrichardday]

HIPAA Health Insurance Portability and Accountabiliy Act http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HIPAA [wikipedia.org]

FERPA Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FERPA [wikipedia.org]

FISMA Federal Information Security Management Act http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FISMA [wikipedia.org]

ISO 27001 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_27001 [wikipedia.org]

SAS70 Statement on Accounting Standards No. 70 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAS70 [wikipedia.org]

Re:

[Anarchduke]

hmm.... Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act [ed.gov] (FERPA)

Standards?

[MikeMacK]

Hmmm...yes, because Microsoft is all about standards compliance...

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[wvmarle]

Hey it gets us less dependent on the host OS, as everything is run in the browser. And that's a good thing, isn't it? This assuming Office365 is not IE-only of course. I know that's probably a stretch though... even though IE is getting more standards compliant than ever.

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[account_deleted]

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[cpu6502]

>>> keep using 2003, and here's a service pack that makes 2003 work with 2007 files!)

And what if someone sends me a 2010 file? In that case I have no choice but to upgrade to the new Office with its shitty ribbon interface (where I can never find the function I want).

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[account_deleted]

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[s.petry]

The funny thing is, the guy claims MS is consistent and stable. Then talks about how you have to get service packs just to work between versions, and he completely omits the Ribbon fuck up that is preventing most companies from migrating to newer versions of Office.

At a place I recently worked, it was estimated that converting 10,000 users to new office would require well over a million dollars in training and additional head count to support users, in addition to MS licensing and not counting productivity

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[Rockoon]

I understand if they dumped Microsoft Office for OpenOffice or LibreOffice, but its simply insane to migrate to Google Docs under a justification that "retraining is expensive"

At least with the former, you can continue running an old version if training costs to roll out a new version are too high. With Google Docs, you are quite literally *forced* to upgrade on Googles timetable.

The person that looks like the shill is you.

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[s.petry]

Retraining for Libre or Google, which looks and acts exactly like the MS product pre-Ribbon? Really? There is no retraining needed. MS has already started telling companies that they want to drop support for 2K3, but received enough push back from customers that they are holding for now.

The money in migrating away from MS is really in conversion of data, not retraining people.

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[account_deleted]

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[account_deleted]

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My company is implimenting O365 now

[gabrieltss]

What a piece of cr@pola! All I can say is I HATE Office 2010 - I hate that god awful ribbon bar. I can't find ANYTHING with it. Outlook (in the cloud) is like a Yo-Yo - It's up, it's down, it's up, it's down. And MS Lync - please! It's just a rolled over version of MS Communicator.

Re:

[jader3rd]

I hate that god awful ribbon bar. I can't find ANYTHING with it.

Every time when I run into someone having the same experience as you, I ask what they're doing and they're always trying to insert something (object, table, picture, link). So I then advise them that since they're trying to insert something, they should click on the insert tab. Solves their problem %100 of the time.

If you're mentally thinking to yourself that you want to insert something, and there's an insert tab/menu item. I sugest clicking on it.

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[s.petry]

Which is fine until you realize how much is not in the tabs at all, or that you have to add tabs to perform basic actions, or how when you perform certain actions the icons in the tabs will change so "fishing" is not always simple. It's very left handed to perform many common tasks, and the constant tab switching is extremely unproductive.

The other horrid feature is the text preview. Go ahead and select-all in a 10 page doc then try and change the font with preview in default mode. Come back in 20 minutes

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

I look forward to the localization movement

[Dan667]

right after all the money is made moving everyone to mainframes ... uh, I mean the cloud, I expect we will see a new movement to move everything back to local environments. Everyone totally remembers all the problems with mainframes, right?

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[TheDarkMaster]

Everyone totally remembers all the problems with mainframes, right?

Yep, I work with one and I have to to make an PHP application interact with it.

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Thread summary

[lilfields]

*Anything remotely positive about Microsoft Office.* = TROLL. *Anything negative about Microsoft Office, throw in a $ for the S in Microsoft* = Oh very insightful, very insightful indeed! Grow up mods.