Which app do you recommend for using on the iPad 2 for opening Microsoft Office files (Word, Excel, PowerPoint?)

A:

If you literally just want to open the documents to read them, you don’t need any apps. The iPad comes with built-in viewers for Microsoft Office files. However, for opening, storing and editing the files, I like two products. One is called Quickoffice Pro HD, which costs $20 and handles all three types of files you cite, and more. The other is the tablet version of Apple’s iWork suite, which is sold as three separate apps for $10 each—Pages for word processing, Numbers for spreadsheets and Keynote for presentations.

This also would be a good place to note that there are reports, unconfirmed by the company, that Microsoft is considering releasing an iPad version of Office itself. I have no evidence this will happen.

Q:

Do any of your recommended Ultrabooks run Office?

A:

All Ultrabooks run Microsoft Office. While Ultrabooks are thin and light, they are full-blown Windows laptops running the latest Intel processors, and in my tests, they ran Office very well, just as well as many heavier, thicker laptops I’ve reviewed.

Q:

My son was told by an Apple phone representative that the iCloud service cannot handle our full iTunes library of 6,000 songs, and it will only sync with your hand-held, wireless devices.

A:

That’s inaccurate. ITunes Match handles 25,000 songs and syncs with Macs, PCs (if they’re running iTunes), the iPhone, iPad and iPod touch.

Walt is on vacation and his Personal Technology column will return Jan. 5. Email him at mossberg@wsj.com.

In the video you’ll meet Ayla, a working mother on a business trip to Johannesburg; Ayla’s daughter, Shannon, who needs help making something for a school bake sale; and a guy named Qin who — well, I’m not entirely sure what he’s doing, but he starts out waiting for a subway train.

These concept videos are always entertaining in the way they show us some slice of life from a routine day in some mildly utopian and antiseptic world of the future, one in which people don’t get stressed by business travel and don’t have hassles at the hotel check-in desks — and where hotel broadband networks actually work. There are lots of portable handheld screens, kind of iPad-like, really, on which people swipe and flick and make other interface gestures that we all intuitively understand now, thanks to — well, the iPad. Which is probably not the comparison that Microsoft is going for here. Ahem.

Also, in the future there are apparently smart windows in taxicabs, and these windows deliver some informative augmented reality, saying things like, “your meeting tomorrow is in this building.” How does the taxi know Ayla’s schedule? From her phone — which looks like a notecard.

Anyway, out of all the things that this video shows, the one thing I want is the eyeglasses that translate languages I don’t speak. Very “Star Trek.”

But when Ayla, the supermom of the future, finally goes to her meeting, it seems more like a meeting that’s held virtually than in person. If that’s the case, why did she even need to fly to Johannesburg in the first place — and why did she have to put on those incredibly cool but dorky-looking glasses? She could have done it all from her home in Redmond. Bonus: She’d have been home to help poor little Shannon with her bake sale in person. Siri, what is the cure for Mommy Guilt?

My weird observations aside, the video is interesting viewing. Hat tip to Nicholas Carr’s Rough Type blog, where I discovered it. Enjoy:

In a continuation of its pivot away from Flash, Aviary, the New York-based multimedia editing start-up, is launching an iPad SDK and several new API extensions today.

If the Aviary name rings a bell, you might be more familiar with the company’s last round of products, which brought Adobe-style media editing programs into the Web browser via — you guessed it — loads of Flash.

Though the SDK products are a huge departure from the company’s direction over the last three years, CEO Avi Muchnick said: “The overall goal has been about democratizing creativity — that hasn’t changed.”

But just about everything else has.

Muchnick said Aviary would no longer be actively adding to their impressive Flash-based editing suite, which includes tools for images, vector graphics and audio, among other things.

Today, rather than hoping you’ll drop an image into their in-browser editor, Aviary makes tools for iOS and Android app developers.

Specifically, Aviary’s kit allows app makers to quickly add image editing features like cropping, red-eye removal and filters into their existing iPhone, Android, and, now, iPad apps.

And as of today’s launch, Aviary’s iPad interface will be available in the Pic Collage iPad app, as well as inside an update to Flickr Studio, a third-party iPad app built on Yahoo’s Flickr API.

The turn-key image editing tools have a look and feel somewhere between Apple’s iOS itself and the old Aviary Flash apps.

But Muchnick is eager to please the new app developer partners Aviary is hoping to win.

“One of my goals was to make this customizable to fit the partner,” he said. “[Partners] can change colors to match their app, or grab just the features they want.”

The new focus on partnerships seems to be moving along well enough.

Aviary claims that mobile and API users edited over a million images last month, and the company has brought on former Microsoft Office’s Paul Murphy to be their VP of business development.

Prior to its new direction, Aviary had raised about $11 million total, most recently from Spark Capital and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.

Aviary is yet another company abandoning Flash, after Apple and Steve Jobs declared it persona non grata for iOS devices.

The company has cut virtually all of its Flash developers and hired mobile developers to build up its SDK offerings.

Massive organizational and directional shifts are tough on any start-up, but Muchnick says that the new direction is really not that at all.

“Aviary doesn’t need to be a destination anymore,” he said. “We want to power all the photo creativity that happens online, and apps are how that will happen.”

I am looking for a tablet that can run Outlook and all Microsoft Office programs, and connect to Microsoft server-based business programs. Is there anything now or in the near future with this functionality?

A:

Yes. While Windows 7 wasn’t designed primarily as a tablet operating system, it does support touch, and thus a number of companies sell tablets that run Windows 7, and therefore, presumably, the Windows software you mention. These companies include Acer, Asus, and ViewSonic. I haven’t tested any of these, because Microsoft’s true tablet operating system will be Windows 8, which is expected to be out next year.

Q:

I use Gmail. When I type the name of a correspondent, the email address shows up. However, if the correspondent has given me a new email address, the old one still shows up, which is totally confusing. How can I get rid of the old address?

A:

One way to do it is to either enter the person’s correct address in your Gmail contacts list, or edit the old one if that’s in the contact list.

You can get to the contacts list by clicking on “Contacts” in the left sidebar of Gmail. More information about Google contacts is here.

Q:

My wife and I love the simple photography-editing application on my Mac. Are there any apps that offer good basic photo-editing features for the iPad?

A:

There are many iPad apps that let you make simple edits to photos, though none that I know of with the editing power of a PC or Mac photo-editing program. One iPad app in this category that I have used and like is Adobe Photoshop Express. This app is free, though a package of extra features costs $5.

Write to Walt at walt.mossberg@wsj.com

AllThingsD’s Ina Fried and I are being held hostage by nefarious Microsoft PR chieftain Frank Shaw in a soul-sapping ballroom in Anaheim, Calif. — within spitting distance of Disneyland’s “It’s a Small World” ride.

The agony — especially since we are about to be entertained by a series of Microsoft execs, including CEO Steve Ballmer, at its annual Financial Analyst Meeting. Yes, it is that kind of day, which included the delightful middle seat on a Southwest Airlines flight.

Here we go:

1:11 pm: There may be forward-looking statements. Well, I should hope so.

1:12 pm: Investor relations dude Bill Koefoed is reading from letters from folks about the Windows 8 look-see, which is also going on here.

It would be touching, except it is not. But I like Bill, who probably has a thankless job, so we’ll let him knock himself out!

1:17 pm: Okay, Bill, let’s move on, although making the execs tiles a la Windows Phone is a nice touch.

1:18 pm: But, no, we go over the financial results from FY11. Double-digit revenue growth, margin expansion, tons of cash, consumers love Xbox and Kinect!

So why does the stock remain so flat? It’s a mystery wrapped in an enigma, wrapped in shareholders who don’t want to give Ballmer much of a break.

Actually, it’s because Wall Street is spanking Microsoft for its slowness in the smartphone and tablet space, that Google is offering Office for free and that Windows is taking a back seat to the browser. Also that cloud thing.

1:21 pm: Most of the slides, including the agenda, have been designed to look like Metro-style “live tiles.”

Note to Redmond: While the interface scales nicely from the phone to the tablet, you may be taking it a bit far.

1:23 pm: First up, COO Kevin Turner, whose speech is call “Operating Momentum.”

He comes out like a football coach and tries to make us all greet him back. I don’t want to go all Larry David here, but one of the unwritten rules of society is that you don’t make anyone under 12 years old or not in a cult do the crowd echo thing.

But, bygones! Turner talks about the strong businesses of Microsoft, especially its Business Division, which is 32 percent of FY11 revenue. The money-losing Online unit is a paltry four percent.

1:30 pm: Turner makes some comparison related to spending, like “drunken sailors.” Say what?

Moving on …

Now for some more football-coachy stuff like “Leveraging & Accelerating Our Strengths!”

Which would be Windows, for the most part.

Next bromide: “Our Cloud Leadership is a Strength!”

Says Turner: Microsoft is “all in!”

Actually, technically, it would be “all up!”

(I am channeling Larry David today. Very innnnnteresssting. Very innnnnnteresting.)

Back to Turner, who promises a “cloud that’s right for every customer.”

1:39 pm: Microsoft really does like the Metro look. It’s freaking everywhere.

1:42 pm: Now: “Embracing the Consumerization of IT!”

There are four pillars of that, including Windows 8.

And now a bit about the growth of the costly Bing and winning in the cloud against Google.

“With Office 365, ladies and gentlemen, we now have a product” to compete, notes Turner, rather gallantly.

Also, Microsoft is smacking back VMware in virtualization.

Go team!

1:46 pm: As an aside, should the consumerization of IT really have four pillars?

1:47 pm: Time for CFO Peter Klein, whose tile reads “Our Opportunity.”

Klein looks like an accountant, which is not an insult, with a reassuring, by-the-numbers tone. It is almost lulling, as Klein’s voice often is on the quarterly calls — which always end up putting my assistant Ed immediately into the nap zone, since I listen to the calls on a speaker phone in the office.

Klein begins by pointing out that the markets in which Microsoft compete will double by 2015, including in gaming and online advertising.

It begs the question: Will Microsoft get a big slug of that?

1:53 pm: Klein goes over the various markets to underscore Microsoft will.

The first up is phone, where the company is trying to break through with Windows Phone. It’s been late, but is a pretty good offering that could become stronger with its hook-up with Nokia.

Next: The big dog of Office. It’s still big, Google or no.

Then: Business Infrastructure — private clouds, public clouds, big clouds and small clouds.

Online advertising is next, which is a weak spot for Microsoft and where it continues to lose money. Which is why Klein spends 33 seconds on it, before moving to the gaming slide.

In that arena, Microsoft does shine, with Xbox and Kinect as very innovative offerings.

1:59 pm: Latest slide from Peter Klein talks about a “balanced approach to capital allocation” with three tiles below it — “invest for growth,” “return cash to shareholders” and “balance sheet a strategic asset.”

If the live tiles in the slide were indeed buttons on a smartphone, I think many in the crowd would be pushing the middle option.

2:01 pm: Peter Klein notes the company’s Triple-A bond rating. Take that, Uncle Sam!

2:02 pm: Klein hands things over to search and online services head Qi Lu.

2:03 pm: Lu, the head of Microsoft’s online unit, is one of the uber-geeks at the company and has perhaps its hardest task.

That would be competing with Google.

While the division loses boatloads of money annually in the effort, Bing has also been a very impressive offering and has been slowly gaining share.

Winning in the space is indeed, as Qi is saying, key to its future.

He brings up the Yahoo online advertising and search partnership, which has been a bit rocky for both parties.

“We had some struggles, because the undertaking is very complex,” said Qi, noting that things have gotten better. “I have confidence we will be able to unlock the economic opportunities.”

Let’s hope so, for the Online unit’s sake.

2:12 pm: Lu says that the company said that the company now has the needed horsepower to compete. But it still needs something new. “To win in search we must break through, break through from where we are,” he said. “We cannot try to out-Google Google.”

2:17 pm: We’re posting some of the key slides from Microsoft’s analyst meeting in this companion post.

2:20 pm: I’ll admit, I checked out a bit here, in which Qi outlines the basics of what Microsoft is trying to do to develop intelligence in online search.

I have heard this speech before from him and it’s a good conceptual model. Investors, of course, only care about financial results.

The message is about “solving deep human needs and delivering compelling experiences,” says Qi.

Disconnect: Wall Street only wants revenue and profits.

2:24 pm: Still, it is nice that Qi dreams so Bing, oops, big.

Next up, Servers & Tools head Satya Nadella, who used to work for Qi.

Nadella is a smoothie speaker and he quickly launches into his spiel about a strong but lesser known part of Microsoft with $17 billion in revenue.

2:35 pm: Nadella is talking about Microsoft’s SQL Server, one of those not-so-sexy big money parts of Redmond’s business. Among those using it are Visa, which built its micropayments using SQL. The next version of the database, btw, is code-named Denali.

On to Office 365 — the cloud-based version of Office. One business signs up every 25 seconds, Nadella says.

2:38 pm: Now he’s updating on Windows Azure, Microsoft’s OS in the cloud. It’s built with enterprises in mind, he says, pointing to some recent customer wins.

Budget carrier Easyjet, for example, has an internal app for their airport workers that runs on connected devices that then talk to Azure.

2:41 pm: The strategy is a mix of public and private clouds.

“In conclusion, our cloud strategy is to cloud optimize every business,” Nadella says, before giving way to Steve Ballmer.

2:46 pm: It’s either the longest or shortest FAM, jokes a golf-shirt-wearing Ballmer.

His tile: “Our Point of View.”

Ballmer has been here for the Windows 8 event and notes how well it seems to be going so far.

“We are seeing some positive reaction,” he says, posting some of the compliments from places like the “Twitter feeds.”

2:49 pm: Ballmer has an unusual way of speaking I always forget about, even though I have heard him talk eleventy-hundred times.

It is an up-and-down, sing-song style, in which he punches the heck out of some words.

Like: “World VIEW” and “Windows is AT the center.”

Which is Ballmer’s first point, because Windows is still Microsoft’s mainstay.

2:52 pm: He runs through the key themes — besides Windows — and they include: New hardware; natural interface, cloud, enterprise and consumer; and “1st party” applications, which means Office and such.

“These form some of the core elements,” says Ballmer, trying to knit it all together and make it not seem that Microsoft is the giant, confusing behemoth that many think it has become.

Ballmer is talking about getting the slowness of “mojo” in the business applications arena, but it could be said about its Windows Phone mobile strategies.

Which is next: “We haven’t sold quite as many,” said Ballmer, but notes “enthusiasm” for the platform.

2:57 pm: “I am not saying I love where we are, but I am very optimistic about where we can be,” he says. “We just have to kick this thing to the next level.”

Actually, about 12 levels. But who’s counting? (The Larry David of tech, that’s who!)

2:58 pm: Ballmer starts the every-word-LOUD about Office.

Why not? It is a huge business for Microsoft after all these years.

Ballmer calls Office “the biggest quiet opportunity.” I will admit it: I like it when a loud dude talks about quiet.

Now an Office demo of Lync, Microsoft’s unified communications offering.

3:07 pm: It is a cool demo, especially the translation part.

The Skype acquisition gets a mention too, with Ballmer noting in a modified Tony the Tiger: “It’s greeeeat.”

We’ll wait and see if Skype head Tony the Bates will deliver.

It’s soon onto Xbox and Kinect, which is decidedly great for Microsoft.

Ballmer notes there will be a lot more video and television offerings on Microsoft.

There is a demo that has some glitches, which is impressive anyway. Obviously, Microsoft is hoping Xbox becomes the home entertainment hub and discovery service (via Bing).

3:20 pm: Live TV is also a big deal, apparently, which is coming to the Xbox.

Finally, Ballmer sums it up, noting things are changing fast.

He says he gets it that investors worry if the company gets it.

“I am very optimistic about our future,” Ballmer concludes, punching NO words.

3:24 pm: It is now on to Q&A, which will also include Windows head Steven Sinofsky.

Goody, goody.

3:25 pm: First question is on whether Microsoft is bringing Office to the new-look Windows. That’s a big one.

Ballmer doesn’t firmly commit, but notes that Microsoft wants to support its platforms with applications.

“We are rethinking and working hard on what it would mean to do Office Metro-style,” Ballmer says.

3:27 pm: Second question on which apps will work on ARM-based Windows, another key question.

Sinofsky reiterates that Windows 7 machines will be able to run all apps in Windows 8 (but of course all Windows 7 machines are Intel or AMD-based, not ARM). Apps written for x86 won’t run on ARM, but all new-style apps will work on both.

Sinofsky notes that if all older apps were allowed to be ported to Windows-on-ARM, the ARM-based systems would lose some of their advantages when it comes to things like battery life.

3:30 pm: Next question is on the opportunity for Windows Phone in the enterprise, noting that most of the recent work on Windows Phone has been on the consumer side.

“The most important thing is to capture the imaginations of people,” he says, noting that they have both work and personal lives.

He notes Mango release has some improvements for businesses.

3:32 pm: Asked if the tablet market will enter the enterprise like the phone, Ballmer notes that consumers will buy lots of different devices and there is always the question of which machines the enterprises will allow in. Some tablets will come in that way, he said.

“We embrace that concept,” Ballmer says.

Sinofsky notes that the proposition of having a tablet that can turn into a serious work computer just by adding a keyboard will have significant appeal.

As for touch, he reiterates his contention that once people use a touch-based Windows 8 machine, they will soon start touching every PC they use.

3:38 pm: Analyst asking in a roundabout way whether Microsoft expects to do better than the 10 percent annual revenue rate it has had over the last five years.

CFO Peter Klein is not biting: “Our view is the opportunity is tremendous. It’s as great as it ever has been.” But market also competitive and fast-changing.

3:46 pm: Finally, a question about Yahoo and the firing of CEO Carol Bartz and all the other uncertainty there.

While Ballmer did the online search and ad partnership deal with her, this hot potato gets handed over to Qi Lu. Thanks, Steve!

The contract survives change of control, he says. “That does not really impact day to day,” says Qi about the Bartz ouster.

Then Ballmer decides to weigh in: “Hundreds of millions of people every day using those services. … No matter where they take their business …”

In other words: He has no idea!

3:49 pm: Next! What about bottom-line growth dropping over the next few quarters?

Klein said Microsoft is focused on the long term and it was not making a guidance statement.

Ballmer: “We’ll give you no guidance. None.”

Anyway, all the markets are growing! Did we not stress that?

3:52 pm: Well, what about a new pricing strategy?

No dice!

The Microsoft execs look a little weary and in need of some cocktail fare. Wait, that’s me.

More on upgrade from Windows 7 and how all these many devices from many companies will work fine together.

Ballmer notes that Bing and Skype will continue to support Google Android and Apple iOS.

It is a small world after all!

3:58 pm: Last question!

One on Office 365 and how it is doing.

COO Turner is back as the coach of Team Microsoft: Great, just great.

I have been warned on the Web that Microsoft Office won’t work on Apple’s new Mac operating system, Lion. Is this true?

A:

In my tests, and also according to Microsoft, Office for the Mac does work in Lion, though some relatively minor features won’t work right. Also, you must be using one of the two latest versions of Office.

In my tests, using the current version, Office 2011, all features I tested worked fine, though of course I wasn’t able to test every one of the thousands of features. I even wrote my entire Lion review in Word 2011 on a Lion-equipped Mac. According to Microsoft, the 2008 version also works, though the 2004 version doesn’t.

However, Microsoft hasn’t updated Office for Mac to take advantage of Lion’s new features. More information on Mac Office compatibility with Lion is here and here.

Q:

Can you point me in the right direction for a purchase of a tablet? I am a home inspector and presently use a Toshiba Satellite laptop with a special Windows software program for my job. I need a tablet with a screen size of 12 inches or more. USB ports would be essential.

I am willing to spend up to $3,000. I need it to be visible in daylight, because I must walk around the property.

A:

You may have trouble finding a tablet that meets all your criteria. If you need to run special Windows software on a tablet with a USB port, you might consider one of the Windows 7 models, aimed mainly at businesses. A good example is the $1200 Asus Eee Slate EP121. I haven’t tested it, but it has a 12″ screen, dual USB ports, and works with either finger or stylus input. The only problem is that it uses a backlit, laptop-type screen, and these aren’t typically great for viewing in direct sunlight.

Q:

An Apple store employee told us that each Apple mobile device battery should be depleted to 0% once per month to keep its battery healthy. Is this necessary?

A:

That’s correct. Here’s part of the company’s advice on iPhone batteries: “For proper maintenance of a lithium-based battery, it’s important to keep the electrons in it moving occasionally. Be sure to go through at least one charge cycle per month (charging the battery to 100% and then completely running it down).”

In its advice on laptop batteries, the company states, in part: “Apple does not recommend leaving your portable plugged in all the time.” It adds that, if you don’t drain and recharge your Mac laptop in the course of normal usage, “Apple recommends charging and discharging its battery at least once per month.”

Email mossberg@wsj.com.

Doing that is a pretty healthy business. I talked with Jon Hallett, Cloud Sherpa’s CEO, who tells me the outfit has some 500 managed clients and one million user seats under management, and that sales grew 600 percent last year.

It’s growing so fast that it will today announce its third acquisition in two months: It is buying WaveAdept, another Google Apps outfit based in Wellington, New Zealand. The move gives Cloud Sherpas a solid presence not only in New Zealand but in Australia, too.

In June, Cloud Sherpas bought Omnetic and Beloit Solutions Group, both Google Apps resellers based in the U.S. The Omnetic deal brought clients like National Geographic, Dr. Martens and retailer Design Within Reach under the Cloud Sherpas banner.

So what does a Google Apps reseller do? When a large company dumps Microsoft Exchange and other mainline enterprise apps, the challenge is the transition. “There’s usually a lot of challenges in areas like data migration and data integration,” Hallett said. “There are often a lot of applications running on- and off-premise that need to be managed.” As a Google Apps reseller, Cloud Sherpas not only sells Google Apps outright, but consults with companies about the shift and even provides some proprietary software that runs atop Google Apps.

One thing he’s not seeing: Any further doubts about the cloud playing a central role in enterprise IT. “Two years ago there was a lot of education taking place in the sales cycle. There were a lot of questions about cloud-based applications that simply don’t get asked anymore.”

Having watched as Google nudged its way into the office productivity business with its Google Apps service, Microsoft is now bringing the strength of its enormous Microsoft Office franchise to the world of cloud applications.

The problem is, there are some risks. Where Google Apps was an incremental new business for Google that in time may or may not become big enough to figure in Google’s financials — it’s not big enough yet — sales of Office are a fundamental pillar that hold Microsoft up.

Office constitutes a huge portion of the Microsoft Business Division, and last year that segment was worth $18.6 billion in revenue, or slightly less than 30 percent of overall sales. It’s also wildly profitable, bringing in about half of Microsoft’s $24 billion in operating income last year. When you think of it that way, it’s not overstating things to say that Microsoft has chosen to mess with some of its crown jewels. There’s no small risk that Microsoft may in time cannibalize some of its own best customers.

But it’s not as though Microsoft hasn’t been talking about this for a long time. We’ve talked with other Microsoft execs about it before. And it’s also clear, judging by Google’s success so far, that Office applications need to move from their desktop-bound paradigm to something more flexible that only the cloud can accommodate by converting it to a service.

Also? This is Microsoft. It does nothing fast; it has been studying the opportunity for several years and thinks it can actually add more customers with Office 365, customers that it couldn’t reach with its traditional Office Suite products. I caught up with Kirk Koenigsbauer, corporate vice president of the Microsoft Office Division, to talk about all of these things. I also gave him the same chance I gave Google’s Shan Sinha earlier today to be catty about the competition. See if he took it below.

AllThingsD: So Kirk, we’ve known Office 365 has been coming for a while. That makes the market for these cloud-based office services more competitive. How does Microsoft see the market?

Koenigsbauer: First, it is an exciting day for us. We’ve been in the cloud business for six years. You heard Steve [Ballmer] mention Energizer, the battery company, as our first customer back then. We’re still deeply partnered with them and they are one of our best customers. Today is an important milestone for us because it is a new service. Office 365 brings the best of what we know about collaboration to the cloud. And so all of our modern capabilities are now in the service. The Office Web applications are now in the service. There are new capabilities that the service has not had historically, like conferencing and support for outside Web sites. It’s really where Office meets the cloud. We see a huge opportunity in the small and mid-sized company segment. Energizer is a huge company, and we work with lots of big companies, but with Office 365 we have the opportunity to meet the smaller companies that historically haven’t had the opportunity to have the best of what the big businesses have. Usually someone like the CEO or CFO has an additional part-time job as the IT person. And so they need things that are familiar and easy to use.

What’s a little unclear to me is the relationship between the traditional Microsoft Office boxed software and Office 365. Is this a fundamental rethinking of Office, or will this be a complement to the existing product or both?

I absolutely see this as the evolutionary step of taking Office to the cloud. One of the things that we’re really focused on with our cloud journey is providing it on the customers’ terms. And there’s a massive transformation happening in this space as you know, and small companies and large companies are going through it, and they all have a different pace and they all have different objectives. We want to make sure that our largest enterprise customers can decide for themselves if they want to use our multi-tenant service, or if they want to use the dedicated service. Do they want to run in a hybrid environment with some workloads running on-premise and some in the cloud? If they’re a government customer they often have to go through certain vendors. Sometimes they want to buy from a hosted provider or a private cloud provider, so we want to support all those options. For small businesses, sometimes all they want is to move their email to the cloud, so we have packages and services for them as well. We also have a version for big enterprise that includes the Office client, and it’s basically a subscription and it runs like a desktop client, but is deeply integrated into the service.

And it works with which versions of Microsoft Office? Please say it works with the Mac, too.

You can use Office 2007 or Office 2010 on the Windows side and then Office 2011 works with it on the Mac side.

When I talked with Google about their Google Apps service, they said that when they land a customer they’re often replacing an Exchange installation or traditional Microsoft Office. Here you’re bringing something that could conceivably do the same thing. Exchange and Office are part of Microsoft’s bread and butter. Are you worried that you’re going to be displacing yourself — and in the end hurting yourself financially in some of these situations?

I think there’s a few ways to think about it. First, we think about it as a great thing for our customers. Specifically, small and medium-sized companies are getting access to products and services that they didn’t have access to before. While we love products like Exchange and Sharepoint, those products have historically sold more into the large enterprise space. So when we can deliver through the small business offering the kind of richness that Sharepoint and Lync and Exchange have, that’s a huge upside for us. In the enterprise, it’s all about doing what’s right for the customer. This is a big transformation that’s happening and its going to take many years. And customers are going to go at different rates. So I don’t worry at all about it displacing revenue. By running a service for our customers we’ll have a longer-term relationship with them. They’ll have access to the most up-to-date version of our software. But we’re also displacing other things, too. We see a lot of customers coming from Lotus Notes and Groupwise. Seventy percent of our old BPOS (Business Productivity Online Standard Suite) came from Lotus.

Is the transition easy for customers?

We have migration and transition planning. We talk about strategies to consider based on the workflow. We’ve got a lot of experience in doing Notes migration that we can do outside of the cloud experience that we can bring to bear.

Talk about the pricing model. It seems like there’s an awful lot of options. Google Apps is either $50 per user per year or $5 per user per month. It seems Microsoft is a little more complicated.

It’s all about providing choice and flexibility for customers based on what they need. For small businesses, we know they want something super simple. And so we have a single offer, $6 per user per month. You can use the current version of Office if you want or you can add on another subscription of Office. On the enterprise side, we know our customers want more choice. We have four core plans labeled E1 through E4. You can imagine, it ranges from basic capabilities to a plan where we add the Web Apps, to a higher end plan where we add Sharepoint. The highest is E4, where we offer Lync Voice services. Then there are Kiosk versions for customers that we’ve never really reached before, who have a lightweight usage of, say, Sharepoint and Exchange. They may be mobile workers or retail shop floor workers. That’s a net new opportunity for us.

I offered Google the chance to get a little catty and they opted not to take it. I’m going to offer you the same chance. People are going to compare Office 365 to Google Apps. Size up the competition for me, if you would, and how do you like your chances?

My take on it is that of course we think about the competition. There’s a massive transformation that’s happening in the workplace. We’ve been in the collaboration and productivity space a long time. We understand it incredibly well. And we’ve been in the cloud collaboration and productivity space for five or six years. I feel like for us it’s like a transformation of our business model. We can update our software every 90 days. We can reach new segments of customers that we couldn’t reach before. Our customers will have the most modern software. That’s a big deal because they’ll be more satisfied, and happier with us. Those are the kinds of things I think about when I think about the marketplace out there.

At the time, I asked out loud, “Where’s Office 365?” The answer I got back from Redmond: “Later this year.”

Well, “later this year” equals today. In a few hours I’ll be headed to a Microsoft event in lower Manhattan, where the software behemoth will formally launch Office 365, its own Web-based office suite, essentially a cloud-based competitive response to Google Docs. In advance of that, I thought it worthwhile to check in once again with Sinha. You’ll remember he’s the former CEO and founder of DocVerse, a company that Google acquired, and whose product got turned into Google Cloud Connect. He’s now Group Product Manager at Google’s Enterprise Group. I caught up with him last week to talk about the soon to be more competitive market for cloud-based office services and about what’s going on at Google Apps.

As a counterpoint, tomorrow I’ll have seven questions for Kirk Koenigsbauer, Corporate VP of Microsoft’s Office Division, and we’ll be talking all about Office 365.

AllThingsD: Shan, this week things kind of come to a head, with Microsoft launching Office 365. Clearly there’s a lot going on in the cloud-based office suite business. How does Google see the state of play right now?

Sinha: The enterprise business at Google is actually really great. We’re seeing a lot of growth. It’s accelerating, which is more important. We’re going from zero to 60 faster than we ever have before. We’re talking about larger revenue bases. We’re obviously not breaking out our revenue yet, but it’s just been a really phenomenal year for us. We’ve got 30 million users of Google Apps; three million businesses have signed up. We’ve seen a tripling of signups this year alone. All the growth we’re seeing across the board. We’re seeing large enterprises, midmarket companies and small businesses.

I get the point with small business and education institutions, and even everyday people like myself. I’m a Google Apps user myself, but I also still have a Microsoft Office seat. But the part I find myself being a little more skeptical about is the large enterprises going to Google Apps. Who’s doing it, and how is it working out?

That’s a common thing that people worry about. It’s not unreasonable to ask if a cloud solution is suitable for something as critical as messaging. The answer we’re hearing a lot is “yes.” What’s even more interesting about it is that it feels like we’re breaking out of the early adopter segment of the market. If you look at some of the biggest customers we’re working with, there’s McClatchy, which rolled it out to 8,500 users, and there’s IHG, the International Hotel Group — that’s a 25,000-seat deployment. You might go so far as to say they’re on the early edge of the adoption cycle, but then we’ve also started working with the state of Wyoming, and I don’t know the last time that anyone considered a state government as part of the early adoption cycle of anything. Wyoming just deployed 10,000 seats for everyone in state government. A lot of people like to talk about the reticence of companies to adopt cloud-based applications, but I think that’s an artifact of two or three years ago, when the question was “why?” Now they get the benefits — there’s cost and ease of deployment. For something that’s as commoditized as email, which everyone has, it’s something that just makes sense.

What changed? You’re offering something that every office has.

Three things. First, email has changed. Every single company has email, so it’s not a strategic tool or technology. You just have to have it. Companies want simple, hassle-free ways to bring email into their organizations. Second, the world has changed. The world is no longer moving off typewriters and printouts. You’re talking about groups of connected people who work in teams, and Google Apps is built for that world. You get collaboration across the whole suite. You get integration between email and docs. Third, in an organization, you’re looking for the way to get the best leverage out of the IT organization. One of our biggest customers is Genentech. They told us that in the past, when they had Exchange deployed, they had a team of 12 managing hard disks and quota and backups and disaster recovery. Now that they’re on Google Apps, they have one person. Those 11 other people are working on more important things to help the company be more competitive.

So when you get into these companies and governments, are you displacing Office and Exchange? Or are you enhancing them or coexisting with them?

When we talk about mail, typically we’re displacing something. We’re either displacing Exchange or Lotus Notes, or some of the smaller products. Now, we do enable companies to incrementally roll out so that it’s not a night-and-day kind of switch. When it comes to Google Docs and collaboration, what we’re seeing is a need for two things: working in teams and working mobile. You’re seeing a need to support lots of different types of devices — iPhones, Android, BlackBerry, tablets, as well as traditional PC desktops. The second piece is centering around teams. If you look at Microsoft Office, it’s a product that was built for individuals, and it was built at a time when the goal was to get people off of typewriters. I think the last typewriter company in the world just shut down. And so what we’re really seeing is Google Docs enabling team collaboration to help people get the most out of teams and groups. Microsoft Office certainly isn’t going away. What we’re seeing is a shift in how people use it. In the past, companies would buy a sitewide license for Office and give it to everyone. Now, companies are considering buying it on a case by case basis. If the finance department is building complex financial models, sure, get them Office. But for everyone else, Google Docs has become a great set of tools for creating and editing documents.

Last time we talked, you told me about Google Cloud Connect for Microsoft Office. You were the founder of DocVerse, which basically became Google Cloud Connect after Google acquired it. How has that been working out so far?

It’s rare that you see an acquisition stick so closely to its original intent. Our goal was to help create that bridge into the cloud. We’ve been seeing really great uptake of Google Cloud Connect, both at large companies and midsized companies. It’s only been three to four months, so we’re not going to break out any numbers, but so far we’re really pleased with the adoption we’re seeing.

So what are your priorities? What’s on your to-do list for the next six to 12 months? One thing I keep reading about is “offline availability” for both email and Docs. What can we expect?

When we think about our offering, it’s not just products and features, but it’s about a completely new way of doing business. At a product and feature level, yes, offline is important, and it’s coming later this summer across all the Google Apps products. We’re going to be making a lot of user interface improvements. And then there’s going to be a lot of rapid iteration. We have a release that comes out every two weeks. Last year we did more than 200 feature releases. This year we’ve done about 100 so far. We push them out to users so that they don’t have to wait three years for the next version. But it’s also important to think about all the ways we do business. We’re going to be making significant improvements to our support infrastructure so our customers can go and get support more easily and in a broader way. We’re also going to make improvements to the collaboration and communications aspects across the suite. We also just changed the billing arrangement. We used to have a $50 per user, per year flat model. And we actually just introduced a $5 per user, per month no-commit model. We’ve seen a tripling in signups because of changes like that.

Let’s get a little catty here. Microsoft is out with its big Office 365 release today. How do you see the competition coming from them? Google Apps is fair competition for Microsoft. But is Microsoft’s online offering going to provide fair competition for Google Apps now?

I think at a very high level, it’s exciting to see a real emphasis on the cloud. This is great for the market. This is where customers are headed, and where they want to be headed. To see Microsoft going in that direction is a great thing for the industry and it’s a great thing for customers. Stepping down a bit, what I would say, it’s reassuring for us that Microsoft is competing on our turf. This is a business we’ve been doing for a few years, and it’s something we know how to do. We’ve built systems processes and products all geared around the cloud, because we don’t have a business model to compete with. Microsoft has to compete with a business model from the past in order to make its way into the cloud-based way of doing things. Microsoft is taking its existing product and kind of putting a cloud sticker on some pieces of it, but it’s still vested in desktop software. You’re still running Outlook, you’re still running Office. And there are still management headaches that come with it. I think we compare favorably on licensing terms. We have one pricing and licensing model. Microsoft has 1,000 people working on Enterprise licenses and schemes, and has 11 different editions and versions. Its a more complicated picture, when we think the world is looking for some simple solutions to problems that frankly aren’t strategic anymore.

Jive CEO Tony Zingale told me that Jive has been working closely with OfficSync for some time. Office workers spend so much of their time working on documents in Microsoft Word, PowerPoint and Excel that it’s a logical place to add the kind of collaboration tools that are the cornerstone of what the social enterprise is all about. “We’ve built deep integration that brings Jive and Office close together,” Zingale said.

The next move, Zingale said, which will come in the third quarter of the year, will be to use OffiSync’s technology to link Jive with that other foundation of office life, Microsoft Outlook. “Email is the place where so much content is created and stored, it is the collaboration system,” he said.

Zingale wouldn’t disclose financial terms of the deal, though he did say that OfficSync is being bought out completely. It was founded by two Israeli brothers, Oudi and Roy Antebi, both Microsoft veterans. Oudi, the CEO, ran marketing campaigns for Microsoft Office and Sharepoint, both in Israel and then at headquarters in Redmond. Roy, the CTO, lead a development team in the Microsoft SQL Server division.

OfficSync is backed by investments from GTD Capital, a Seattle-based venture capital firm, and Vertex VC, an Israeli fund.

Its also Jive’s second acquisition in as many moths. In April it acquired Proximal Labs as it was just getting out of the gate itself. And in March it sent a pretty strong signal about its intentions toward going public sooner rather than later when it added four directors, all of them with public company experience.

I asked Zingale if last week’s IPO by LinkedIn had caused him to consider quickening his pace toward filing an S1 with the SEC. “Obviously we were very interested observers,” Zingale said. “Clearly we’re very riveted by the benefits of being a public company, but I can’t say anything specific about our plans.”

Jive has something important in common with LinkedIn. One of its investors is Sequoia Capital which has invested a combined $27 million, leading a Series A funding round in 2007 and a Series B in 2009. Kleiner Perkins got in on the action leading a $30 million Series C last year.

When he first joined Google nearly seven years ago to start its enterprise division, Gmail was barely out of the gate and Blogger was the search giant’s most notable acquisition. What could Google offer enterprises that they weren’t already getting from Microsoft and Oracle and IBM and scores of other established software and hardware vendors?

The answer? An alternative. Sheth pitched Google’s trio of senior executives–Eric Schmidt, Larry Page and Sergey Brin–on the idea of experimenting with standard office applications–a word processor, a spreadsheet–that operated entirely within a browser. The product evolved into Google Apps, and while Microsoft Office still dominates the enterprise desktop, it’s widely accepted that Google Apps has made some important inroads against it: 3 million businesses use it in some way, and some 30 million people use it in their businesses.

Aside from the scores of companies, governments and non-profits that have adopted it, there are millions of college students using it, attracted by the zero-dollar price tag. Microsoft has responded with its own cloud-based office offering, Office 365, but its clear that Redmond’s traditional grip on the enterprise desktop isn’t quite as tight as it once was.

Now Sheth has an even bigger target in mind. If Office isn’t so sacred, why does Windows have to be? As the Group Product Manager Chrome OS for Business, he makes an interesting argument that the Redmond-centric world of corporate desktops is quietly nursing a desire for change. Where will it come from? A combination of cloud computing, and a desktop that’s stripped down to nothing but a browser. I talked with Sheth by phone earlier this month and my first question was about his education.

NewEnterprise: You did your undergraduate degree in electrical engineering, but now you work in software. Circuit design wasn’t for you?

I realized I liked software a lot more than hardware. But I was most of the way through with electrical engineering at Stanford. So I did my masters in software.

Does having been educated first on hardware give you a different perspective on any of the work you’re doing at Google?

It is actually relevant. A lot of what I’ve done involves software and user-facing interfaces, but it also involves a lot of infrastructure. When you look at VMWare, which is where I worked before Google, it’s about what you can do with a combination of hardware and software and change the game. It’s similar with Google Apps. It’s a big set of user-facing applications, but the big thing is the cloud computing infrastructure that’s underneath. The fundamental question is about how you wire computers together in the most efficient way possible. That is really the bread and butter underneath Google Apps. And finally with Chrome OS it’s the same question: What can you do to the form factor of the hardware if you’re really only running a browser on it. The background in hardware has served me well.

So you joined Google about seven years ago with the mission of creating something–you basically had a blank sheet of paper–that Google could offer the enterprise. And your first idea got shot down. What was it?

At the time I joined Google the enterprise division was literally 25 people. We had a few engineers and salespeople, and we brought in a manager, Dave Girouard. I came in with the explicit mission of starting something else within Google that was to be aimed at businesses. And that something else was completely undefined. When I was still at VMware, a friend sent me a Gmail invite, and I started using it, and it was better than my corporate mail. I thought it could be a very interesting enterprise product. After I joined, I pitched Eric, Larry and Sergey on the idea of putting Gmail into an appliance and shipping it out to corporations. They didn’t go for it. I went back six months later, with some new insight, specifically that we could use our server architecture to make it easier for businesses and educational institutions to deploy and manage email, and that from there we could move up-market to deploy applications. We got exactly one engineer to work on that.

It was very much like running a start-up. I was the product manager and was tasked with starting this new business and we went through all the classic things that a start-up does. Building the product, building the team, selling the vision to an early set of adopters–San Jose City College was our first college customer and Northwestern and Arizona State followed after that. We started small and incubated it within Google. We did a lot of experimenting with that small team to see what was viable and eventually we were able to get more resources to make it bigger.

So how does the Google Apps experience compare to your new role in building a business around Chrome OS for businesses?

It’s very similar. In Chrome OS I’m back in start-up mode. Essentially I’m trying to build a vision. We have a small team of people that all sit together in one area, building out the business model, and we’re trying to start small and grow from there. One way to look at Google is as a closed confederation of start-ups. All these teams are empowered to build something that is visionary. But we all have a lot of leverage behind us, and so we’re able to do a lot more than we ever would have been able to do if we were a small company.

I see a potential problem there: Don’t all these start-ups within Google run the risk of creating independent silos or fiefdoms that aren’t all on the same page? We hear a lot of criticism of the silos at companies like Sony or even Microsoft. Even at Google, there’s Google Voice, which is a great product but doesn’t really fit with anything else, though I understand it eventually will. But how do you avoid this silo problem?

It’s a great question, and its something we’ve thought about a lot. There are basically two extremes. The first extreme is on one hand you have different teams doing things completely different from each other. The other extreme requires that everything be integrated extremely well together. We tried to find a happy medium. The benefit for one is that you can move quickly. But if you do the other extreme, you slow down innovation. Your project may take several times longer. One big advantage is the Google infrastructure is all there. You don’t have to think about user authentication or how to store files. That’s all done for you, so everyone is using the same infrastructure. A lot of the parts you need are there and you just build on top of them. You can never strike a perfect balance, but we think ours is pretty good.

So what’s your mission with the Chrome OS?

My mission is to bring Chrome to business and to ask how we make it something that can reshape the enterprise desktop. The thing that was really intriguing for me, is that cloud computing has done so much for businesses. You don’t need to think about deploying the hardware, you can just turn things on. You don’t need to worry about massive up-front payments for hardware, you can just pay monthly for what you use. And your applications just keep getting better. In my mind the cloud really stops at the desktop.

The desktop is tremendously hard to manage. It costs a lot to maintain, most of the cost for a business is all in the maintenance. It doesn’t get better over time, it gets slower as you use it. I think there’s a huge opportunity to bring the principles of cloud computing to the desktop. It gets better, and it’s fast and secure. That’s the vision. We think we can do that because we have a unique operating system. It’s just a browser that’s completely stateless. As a result of that, you can boot up in 5 to 10 seconds. And no matter where you go, you log in, you have your entire desktop. If the system breaks, that’s not a problem, you just jump on to another system. If you lose it, it’s not a problem because its stateless.

There are people who would say its crazy to try and dislodge Windows as the operating system of choice for businesses, and yet you think you can do it. What kind of results have you seen so far?

If you just have a browser and take out everything else, life gets a lot simpler. And this is why I think that the desktop OS is ready for a radical change much like the enterprise applications were a few years ago. One thing we’ve found is that very significant portions of the population are using only a browser right now. Those trends show that this area is ripe for a change. If you look down the line in three years, the majority of those business users will use only a browser. We created this pilot device called the Cr48, which is a notebook with Chrome OS installed on it. We received 50,000 applications from businesses interested in trying it, and we now have thousands deployed in the field. We have companies like Intercontinental Hotel Group, Virgin American and Groupon using them for different things. We’ve even heard from the US Army Intelligence Office. We heard from a lot of companies we didn’t expect interest from.

I think you’ll see some early adopters, groups of users within companies, this year. Some companies’ pilot programs want to do large roll-outs to call centers and to customer service reps and some want to roll them out to mobile sales people. Many will find that it makes sense to them because it brings the cost down. No one wants to pay to have to fix a system that’s broken because two applications are in conflict with each other. No one wants to pay to go patch an operating system. That kind of thing is going to become a lot easier with Chrome OS.

This will certainly trigger talk of a showdown in the cloud between Microsoft and Google, whose Google Apps service is trying to win business from large enterprises, including big companies and government agencies. And in some cases the competition between the two has gotten ugly.

Google, you may remember, is suing the Department of the Interior, saying they were improperly excluded from bidding on a big project to provide cloud-based office and collaboration software–after Microsoft won the contract. Microsoft has accused Google of not having the right security certifications for doing business with the federal government. Google slapped back, saying Microsoft didn’t know what it was talking about.

Whatever. The point is, starting today, you can try Microsoft’s cloud-based version of Office for yourself. Still no word on when it will be ready for prime-time. I took the opportunity to subject Ron Markezich, corporate vice president for Microsoft’s U.S. Enterprise and Partner Group, to the Seven Questions treatment. We talked about the state of Microsoft’s cloud application and service offerings, including not only Office 365 but also BPOSS, its Business Productivity Online Standard Suite, which includes a cloud-based version of Microsoft Exchange, SharePoint and other applications. And yes, during the conversation, more swiping at Google–as well as a little at IBM–occurred.

NewEnterprise: Ron, when I think of Microsoft, I think of Office. And when I think of Office, I see it as a box of software that I have to schlep to the a store to buy in a box. I tend not to think about it as something I can get in the cloud. When did Microsoft start thinking about moving its multi-billion dollar software franchise to the cloud?

Markezich: My background is that I’ve been at Microsoft for 13 years. Prior to this I was CIO. And about six years ago Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer called a meeting and said the future of our company is selling our software over the Internet. They wanted to take the operational folks in IT and put them in engineering in order to really combine this online service delivery of our software. And really that was the beginning of what we now call BPOSS and now also Office 365. Six months after that meeting we signed up our first customer, which was Energizer, the battery company, and we serve them today, globally. I soon moved out of the CIO role and into engineering, and built this business based on our traditional software, as the engineering teams re-architected our software like Office and Sharepoint for the cloud.

So who are your customers? And who–obviously Google is one–do you see as your competitors?

If you look at just where we stand now, we have the best set of clients you could ever hope for: Glaxo SmithKline, Ingersoll-Rand, Coca-Cola, Kraft, McDonalds. These are customers who aren’t just using bits and pieces of the cloud. I think its getting hard to tell who’s a customer and who isn’t. In some cases you don’t even have to pay for these services. You might have two or three people inside an organization using the service. But these are all cases where the entire company has moved to BPOSS. They are using it across their entire work force.

As to competitors, I think Google gets a lot more press because it’s a lot more fun to write about than Microsoft and IBM. It surprises me how much Google is visibly going after the enterprise. Frankly it’s nowhere near ready to go after the enterprise. Google throws out a lot of customer references. But when you sign Google’s contract you give them the right to use your name as a customer reference, regardless of how many seats you buy. Our default is we can’t use your name unless we get your permission. In reality we don’t see Google as getting that much traction. If you look at where we battle more in the enterprise, it’s against IBM on Lotus Notes. And so about two thirds of our seats in the enterprise are coming to us from Notes. We see more of a fight there with IBM trying to hold on to their Notes base.

The fact is, Google just isn’t ready for these types of customers. If you go to the RFP [Request for Proposal] and look at all the requirements, there’s many that they simply don’t meet. I think they want to be given a fair shot but they’re really not ready.

What makes Google not ready?

They’re taking a consumer service and trying to provide that to businesses, and architecturally there are a lot differences. As a consumer you probably don’t ask where your data is going to be stored. That’s the first question an enterprise customer asks. They ask what countries their data is stored in and where that data flows. We take our data flows and we make them available to customers. We tell them where and how its stored and what the circumstances are where it can be accessed from outside of that country and moved outside of that country. You’re just not going to think about those things with a consumer service. But it’s one of the reasons that we don’t use Hotmail, for example, as an enterprise service. Hotmail wasn’t built that way. Their mail service is built right on top of GMail. In fact what you’re paying for is support, but even there they fall short. They don’t have the kind of service level agreements that we do. I’d love to be a fly on the wall inside Google right now, because they’re probably sitting back and saying “Wow, this enterprise IT stuff is a lot harder than we thought.” It’s not easy, and the demands are high.

So what are customers telling you? Where are they hurting and what do they need?

Every customer loves the cloud. In fact, a lot of customers are embracing the cloud because their CEO is hammering them, asking for it. But it’s dangerous. What people love about the cloud is the fact that they don’t have to worry about upgrades, they don’t have to worry about hardware, and they don’t have to do a big capital investment. The flip side is that as a customer you’re now one voice of many, and a lot folks don’t realize what that means in terms of support and feature requests. One customer doesn’t get prioritized over another. The other thing is the sense of control. When you’re running everything yourself, you know exactly what’s going on. In the cloud, you’re running with thousands of other customers and you have to rely on the provider to let you know what’s going on. Some customers love it. Some struggle with it at first until they realize, for example, that they’re benefiting from the scale.

I realize this will vary case by case, but by and large, what are customers saving on per-seat cost?

I was with one customer last week who told me they’re saving 50 percent from what it cost him to run Exchange in his data center to running Exchange online. Typically, what we see are customers saving in a range of 30 to 50 percent. We usually see those who come from Lotus Notes save 50 percent. Notes is a little more expensive to run. But this customer was a Microsoft customer saying he saves 50 percent. We’ve also had customers say they’re breaking even, but they’re breaking even with better availability, and with geo-redundant data centers. But the bulk of them fall into that 30 to 50 percent range.

I know what your customers’ pain point are. What are yours?

Once customers move to the cloud they want more stuff, faster. I always liken it to running. The hardest step to take is the first one out the door. Once you get out the door everything is easier. With the cloud, once you take that first step and move a mission-critical system to the cloud, you’re kind of there and you want to move everything to the cloud. So they want Windows Intune faster, they want Microsoft Project faster. I was with Coca-Cola recently, and they said they wanted to do everything they did with Office 365 and do it with everything else. And so keeping up with that portfolio of additional cloud services is tough, and launching a cloud service is not easy. There’s a lot of engineering work, then you have to work out the support model, the regulatory aspects, and the certifications. All of these are things we have to work through before we launch a service. Then you launch and customers want more features. So our big challenge is keeping up with the appetite that our customers have for more services.

With this you’re making fundamental changes to how a key Microsoft franchise that has brought in billions upon billions of dollars is sold. Can this new model ultimately catch up with and supplant the old one?

It’s even more than that. We’ve made a version of Office that anyone can use online for free. But as a business model we see this as something that can be beneficial to Microsoft in a couple of ways. One, every customer that has bought BPOSS, we see their total software spend with Microsoft go up. Even that customer I told you about that saved 50 percent, they still are spending far more than they did before. For one, they were just buying Exchange Client Access Licenses. Now they’re buying Exchange CALs, plus spending some money for the service. Now we don’t make as much profit margin, but we make some profit margin on that. But the biggest reason is that most of the time, they buy other things from Microsoft. They buy new versions of Office, they might be buying Active Directory if they didn’t have it before. They might not have had Sharepoint or Lync, and now they’re buying those. So every one of these customers, we see their total spend with Microsoft go up anywhere from 2 to 6 times what it was before. The other thing is that if you look at the total industry spend, most of it is on activities where there’s no value added. Every dollar you spend on software from Microsoft, you spend $6 trying to get it to do anything. What we’re trying to do is drive that six dollars to zero.

These omissions have led many readers to ask me how you get files—especially Microsoft Office files and PDFs—into and out of iPads. They have bolstered the contention that the popular tablet is really just a “consumption device,” not a productivity tool.

So, here’s a brief primer on how to get such documents into and out of an iPad, and how to view, edit and create them on the tablet. This isn’t an in-depth product review, though I’ve tested every product and method I will mention here. It’s merely a quick, practical guide to how to work with documents on an iPad.

Three faces of creating iPad documents: From left, Keynote, Pages and Numbers apps running on an iPad 2

Before we start, let me mention some caveats. First, to get the most out of documents on the iPad, you have to download add-on apps. Second, while many of these apps can store and organize files, those file systems are silos within the apps. Third, these apps often lack full fidelity with Office on a PC or Mac, especially for complex documents. Fonts and layouts may be changed, and none of the apps I tested was able to display revision histories in Office documents.

Finally, unless you buy an add-on keyboard, typing on an iPad isn’t as easy for many people as on a regular computer. For instance, I wouldn’t want to type a 30-page legal brief on an iPad. But you can use an iPad with Office documents and PDFs.

Creating and Editing Files

Microsoft hasn’t built a version of Microsoft Office for the iPad. But several companies make office suites for the tablet that aim to emulate Office by allowing you to create and export Office-compatible documents, and to import and edit documents created in Office on PCs and Macs.

The three most notable of these are Quickoffice Connect, which costs $15; Documents To Go, which comes in two versions costing $10 and $17; and Apple’s Pages, Numbers and Keynote, which cost $10 each.

All of these apps are more limited than Office on a PC, but I have found they worked pretty well. All have their own internal file-storage system, and each can be connected to cloud-based services, or can open email attachments or receive wired file transfers from iTunes.

Wired File Transfers

When you plug an iPad into one of the recent versions of Apple’s iTunes program on your computer, and select the iPad icon in the left column, a section appears at the bottom of the Apps tab that is called File Sharing. This module lists all the apps on your iPad that can handle various kinds of documents, and shows you what files they contain. You can then add files from your computer to one of the listed apps, or save the files to your computer, using buttons labeled Add or “Save to….” Even veteran iTunes users may not know about this feature, because Apple hasn’t publicized it much, and you have to scroll down in iTunes to see it.

Viewing Email Attachments

Out of the box, the iPad allows you to view a wide variety of documents attached to emails. If somebody emails you a Microsoft Office file, a PDF file, or other common types of files, you get an icon in the email, and, if you tap and hold your finger on the icon, a pop-up menu appears that allows you to view it in full-screen mode, a function called Quick Look. Just this week, I used this method to review and catch an error in a Microsoft Word document I received from a colleague while riding in a New York taxi with an iPad.

If you have an app like Quickoffice installed that allows saving or organizing documents, or editing them, the email pop-up menu becomes even more useful. In addition to the Quick Look option, it gives you an “Open In…” option that lets you move the document to an app of your choice, where you can store it permanently, or even edit it, if the app allows for that. This “Open In…” option also appears in various apps other than email, so you can move documents from one app to another.

Wireless File Transfers

There are some iPad apps available that allow you to move documents wirelessly if your computer and iPad are on the same Wi-Fi network. One that I have used successfully is called Air Sharing and costs $2.99. It mounts your iPad on your computer as if it were an external drive, and allows you to drag files between your computer and iPad.

Cloud-Based File Transfers

If you back up your PC or Mac files to a cloud-based remote service, like SugarSync, Dropbox, or Apple’s own iDisk, many of these services provide iPad apps that allow you to fetch the files to your iPad, or, in some cases, upload files from your iPad to these services. These apps typically allow you only to view or perhaps store the files on the iPad, but some include the “Open in…” feature to let you move the file to another app where you can edit it.

Sophisticated File Viewers

Some apps for the iPad let you store large numbers of different types of files, view them and even annotate them. My favorite, GoodReader, is a $4.99 app that handles all the Microsoft Office file types, plus PDFs and more.

GoodReader even lets you type notes on, or draw on, PDFs, and then save and email the annotated version. It also allows you to organize files into folders and rename them. And it lets you retrieve files from cloud-based services, without having to switch to a separate app provided by those services. Among the cloud services it supports are Google Docs, Dropbox, SugarSync and iDisk.

Bottom Line

It’s perfectly fair to criticize Apple for leaving out a USB port and a shared file system. The company is reputed to be working on a cloud-based file sharing system that may alleviate these omissions. But, even today, you can work with common file types on an iPad, if you know how.

Watch a video with Walt Mossberg on transferring files to an iPad at WSJ.com/PersonalTech. Find all of his columns and videos at the All Things Digital website, walt.allthingsd.com.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110316/in-and-out-of-office-putting-ipads-to-work/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110316/google-turns-word-comments-a-necessary-office-evil-into-discussions/ http://allthingsd.com/20110316/google-turns-word-comments-a-necessary-office-evil-into-discussions/#comments Wed, 16 Mar 2011 14:00:23 +0000 Arik Hesseldahl http://newenterprise.allthingsd.com/?p=4033 One of the great annoyances of office life is collaborating on a written document. Once the original writer seeks feedback from more than one or two people, the process of wrangling the comments embedded in the multiple copies that have been sent around the office as email attachments quickly takes on a life of its own. Wouldn’t it all be easier if everyone’s comments appeared in a single, unified stream?

That’s the idea behind a new commenting system being introduced in Google Docs today. Comments have been converted into what Google is calling Discussions. And these discussions are comparable to the streams in so many social media sites like Twitter and Facebook, complete with the Twitter-like convention of “@ mentions” (A sample comment is pictured) but they’re also linked to email, so you can participate in the discussion without having sign into Google Docs. You can also tell who made a comment and when, as it includes timestamps, profile pictures and email notifications make it easy to keep track of the feedback process.

The feature is going live today, but only on new documents, and for those Google Apps users who have opted for the Rapid Release track on new features–those who haven’t will get it over the next week or so. A two-minute video below gives you a pretty good idea of what it looks like.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110316/google-turns-word-comments-a-necessary-office-evil-into-discussions/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110224/googles-cloud-connect-beta-is-over-now-wheres-office365/ http://allthingsd.com/20110224/googles-cloud-connect-beta-is-over-now-wheres-office365/#comments Thu, 24 Feb 2011 13:37:24 +0000 Arik Hesseldahl http://newenterprise.allthingsd.com/?p=3574 Last November, when Google first announced its plans to give users of several versions of Microsoft Office the ability to sync their documents with Google Apps, Google’s line of cloud-based office productivity apps, and sought volunteers to try it out, thousands stepped up, and Google had to turn many away.

It’s called Google Cloud Connect for Microsoft Office, and it’s going live today for all Windows users running Microsoft Office 2003, 2007 and 2010. (Sorry Mac users.) It’s a plug-in (reader Ben provides a download link in the comments below) that gives Office users in multiple locations the ability to edit and collaborate on Office documents at the same time. The new service grew out of Google’s acquisition of DocVerse last year.

Alongside the new service Google says it is launching a 90-day trial period that will allow companies that haven’t yet embraced the notion of cloud-based productivity and collaboration to try Google Apps for 90 days. Google is calling it the 90-Day Appsperience, and it’s available for what Google calls “a nominal fee.” Companies who take advantage of the trial get unlimited use of Google Apps for 90 days, plus support.

This is taking place as the competitive scrum between Google and Microsoft concerning cloud-based office tools heats up. Microsoft of course has the huge Microsoft Office franchise, which is the Big Kahuna within the Microsoft Business division, which reported $18.6 billion in sale last year. Its own cloud-based enhancement for Office, known as Office365, was first announced in October, but remains in a limited Beta test period, and so isn’t generally available. Microsoft has promised to release it generally during the second half of later this year. Google is clearly trying to take advantage by finishing its beta test of Cloud Connect well before Office365 is ready. Maybe this will spur Microsoft to speed it up a little.

Earlier this year, BoomTown’s Kara Swisher visited with Shan Sinha, former DocVerse CEO, who’s now product manager for Google Apps. In the interview below he talks about the learning process Google has been going through as it goes after the enterprise market.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110224/googles-cloud-connect-beta-is-over-now-wheres-office365/feed/ 4 http://allthingsd.com/20110127/microsoft-considering-whether-to-bring-office-to-apples-mac-app-store/ http://allthingsd.com/20110127/microsoft-considering-whether-to-bring-office-to-apples-mac-app-store/#comments Thu, 27 Jan 2011 23:48:44 +0000 Ina Fried http://mobilized.allthingsd.com/?p=3125 Microsoft says it continues to be pleased with sales of the Mac version of Office, but has not yet decided whether to offer the product or any of its components in the Mac version of the App Store, which launched earlier this month. Similar to the iPhone store, the App Store for Mac puts Apple in the position of retailer, taking a 30 percent cut of sales.

“It’s something we are looking at,” Microsoft’s Amanda Lefebvre told Mobilized. However, the company said its product is already available in lots of places as well as via the Web–including in a new, free 30-day trial version.

“It’s something we haven’t ruled out,” she said. “We just have to see how that relates to our business.”

In its absence, visitors to the App Store are given prominent options to buy Apple’s rival iWork components–Pages, Keynote and Numbers.

Microsoft is just starting to bring Office to the iPhone. Last week the company released an iPhone version of its OneNote note-taking program as a free download in the iOS App Store. Microsoft didn’t commit to releasing other titles for the iPhone, but said it is committed to bringing Office to more types of devices.

“You can absolutely expect Office to expand its presence across other platforms,” Microsoft senior director Jason Bunge said in an interview.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110127/microsoft-considering-whether-to-bring-office-to-apples-mac-app-store/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20101215/google-chrome-os-review/ http://allthingsd.com/20101215/google-chrome-os-review/#comments Thu, 16 Dec 2010 02:03:25 +0000 Walter S. Mossberg http://ptech.allthingsd.com/?p=1671 In the personal-computer industry, where things change fast, one fact has been a constant for years: There are two major, mainstream operating systems for consumers. One, Microsoft Windows, runs on many brands of hardware and dominates sales. The other, Apple’s Mac OS X, runs only on its maker’s Macintosh computers, and has had a resurgence in popularity in recent years. Other contenders, such as various versions of Linux, have remained on the fringes.

Next summer, however, Google hopes to add a third broad-based computer-operating system to challenge the duopoly. It’s called Chrome OS, and is based on Google’s Chrome Web browser. With Chrome, Google isn’t just aiming to elbow its way into the OS business. It’s hoping to change the entire paradigm. Instead of storing most programs and files on your computer itself, the Chrome OS will mainly run programs from, and require you to keep your data in, the cloud—remote servers located on the Internet. In effect, it turns your entire computer into a giant Web browser, instead of treating the browser as just one among many local programs.

The Chrome OS isn’t finished, and isn’t ready for broad public testing. Google readily concedes it has lots of bugs and rough edges. But the company has designed a small test laptop with the new operating system installed and distributed “a few thousand” of them to outsiders to try.

A Cr-48 test machine, with Chrome OS installed. Chrome will be licensed to select manufacturers.

I have been using this machine, called the Cr-48, for about a week, and have some explanations and first impressions to share. This isn’t a formal review; that will have to wait till the product is finished and is on commercial computers.

I focused mainly on the software, which is built on a Linux underpinning. That’s because Google doesn’t ever intend to sell the Cr-48 hardware, an all-black, unbranded laptop with a 12-inch screen, a rubbery surface and a large, buttonless touchpad that resembles those pioneered on the Mac.

In my tests, I found this early Chrome OS machine to be fast, with decent battery life and almost instant resumption from sleep. It handled most Web sites fine, and worked almost exactly like the very nice Chrome browser on Windows and Mac.

I also liked the one hardware feature worth mentioning: a radically redesigned keyboard. Instead of function keys, or various legacy keys such as Caps Lock, Chrome OS keyboards feature dedicated browser-oriented keys, like ones for moving back and forth among Web pages and windows, refreshing a page, entering full-screen mode, or quickly opening a new tab and beginning a search.

The Chrome OS will have a big advantage. Because it is mainly a front-end-to-cloud service, if you lose your laptop, you can get another one and just sign into your cloud accounts. You should be able to find all your stuff waiting for you.

However, users of the Chrome OS will have a huge adjustment to make. They will have to give up the rich, local programs they have spent years learning to use and tweaking to their liking. You can’t install local programs on a Chrome OS computer. Instead, Google provides a Web Store inside the browser that allows you to download icons for “Web apps”—mostly websites designed to look and work like standard programs.

Some of these, like Gmail, are familiar and popular. Others are newer. For instance, the New York Times and AOL already designed Web-based news apps for Chrome OS, and there is a Web-based version of the TweetDeck program for Twitter. These apps, and the store’s own icon, appear on the new Tab screen of Chrome OS (and also are available in the current Chrome browser.)

In my tests, I found these apps generally worked fine. But most aren’t as rich and versatile as local Windows and Mac programs. For example, there was no way to play my local, personalized iTunes music collection, unless I spent many hours uploading it to some Web-based service.

I also had to settle for Web-based productivity programs—like word processors and spreadsheets—with many fewer features than standard local ones, such as Microsoft Office.

And I ran into plenty of frustrations. At this stage, Chrome OS can’t do anything with USB flash drives or SD memory cards, and can’t synchronize phones. And it has a very limited ability to store, or allow you to do anything with, email attachments or other files you might download and prefer to keep locally rather than on a server controlled by somebody else.

Printing was a chore, requiring a complicated setup on a Windows computer that Chrome used as a conduit to a printer.

Plus, Chrome OS is hardly stable yet. I suffered numerous crashes of Adobe’s Flash player, and even Google’s own Google Talk instant-messaging service, which appears in a little pop-up window on top of the browser. The company says it hopes to fix these problems by next summer.

Finally, the biggest downside: Because it’s a cloud-oriented system, Chrome OS is almost useless if you lack an Internet connection. Google says it plans to offer some limited offline functionality, and to encourage makers of Web apps to do the same. It will also eventually be able to make some use of some files stored on external hard disks. But the basic operating mode will require you to be connected to the Internet.

To help with this, the Cr-48 has a Verizon cellular modem built in, to supplement its Wi-Fi connectivity. Verizon is offering 100 megabytes of data free, but that is a small amount, and you have to pay for more.

Like the Mac OS, but unlike Windows or Google’s own smartphone operating system, Android, the Chrome OS will be deeply integrated with hardware. So, Google doesn’t plan to distribute or license the new operating system to every hardware maker—at least not at first. You won’t be able to install it on an existing computer. It will be available in 2011 on a limited number of computer models from selected manufacturers.

Google says this is because security is a high priority and requires special hardware designs that tightly bond with the software.

Also, Chrome OS computers will, in some respects, be more like iPads than laptops. They won’t have hard disks, just a limited amount of flash-memory storage, and they won’t have DVD drives.

They are an attempt to realize the old idea of a “network computer,” or one which is mostly a front end for network services.

Of course, many people already spend most of their time with their PCs and Macs connected to the Net. Many use Web-based email programs or streaming music programs instead of local software.

So the time may be right for a cloud computer, a change in the paradigm. Google certainly hopes so.

Find all of Walt Mossberg’s columns and videos online, free, at the All Things Digital Web site, walt.allthingsd.com. Email him at mossberg@wsj.com.

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