Beyond Single Device.

The world now is changing. Technology is more diverse. Changing the usage than the decade ago. Capable of doing more, much more. Enable us to connect to people that we don’t know in the other side of the world. The one that changing is not only the hardware but the software also. It’s don’t exist on the single device anymore. There are many service that is created in this design and also move to this design. Google drive, Office 365, ITunes and IOS, Evernote, Dropbox, and many more. This software or services is available to be used everywhere, from smartphone tablet pc laptop even the web itself.

The future is bright that the least I can say for us. The sun still shine and tomorrow will come, but for the future of software that is more interesting. It will change our life significantly, it will change the way we work, we play, we learn, and  our daily life. It already change how we work right now, believe it or not. The draft of this blog is written on a tablet in a library saving over the cloud. And I can open my work anywhere. Edit it everywhere. Several year ago this isn’t possible, the synching of data must be done manually for each devices and compatibility is a big thing. No more excuses for me for not doing my work because I’m not home yet.

Mr. O’Reilly have talked about the Web 2.0 concept Software Above the Level of a Single Device, He’s using iTunes as a good example. You can read the article here and here. The article explain the concept really nicely.

For this one I’m going to talk about the new Microsoft Office 365. The Office recently moved to a service provider. They don’t sell the software anymore but provide a subscription for the user, no more yearly (not really yearly but regularly over the span of several year) buying the new office product. This is a great move, because we don’t stuck with an old version of office because we bought the “number of year version”, the moving of the model mean we the user get the update to the latest version.

Let’s talk about the changes to the application itself what made it “beyond what device”, simply it really moved beyond one device. You can use the service on multiple device also and on the web (they have a web editor for the office). Just recently they also released an iPad version of the app, there’s the Excel, Word, PowerPoint, OneNote, and SkyDrive (or now known as OneDrive) for the iPad. The interesting one here is the OneDrive, in my point of view it’s the heart of the whole service. It connect all the device thru the internet synching all the data, enabling the user to access the files on multiple device. For example the draft that I’m editing here is automatically synch with the file on the iPad there even a versioning system.

Collaboration I think is a big thing here, I’s very simple and easy to do, you just need to add a user to the file and he/she can change the file. The versioning tool is very extensive so we can see the changes by each user on the file. So now it’s easier to create work together on paper, essay and even presentation.

But There always a crack in the ivory. We can see that by moving to the subscription model that the user don’t own the app anymore. In the previous office version the app only need online authentication. If the authentication passed, that mean you own the app. But now you need an online account to access the service. That mean if you only can user if your id is valid. If it’s revoked that mean you can’t access the service anymore and that is bad, because the account is a Microsoft account that is used for your pc and devices.

After the changes that it takes the Office platform in my view is easier and pleasant to use. No more exchanging files on different devices, no more versioning problems, and access from multiple device. Fixing several problem and adding new things to the works.

So this is my take on the concept so what do you think about the new office? Is the sub worth it? Is the changes good? Do you use it on other device? Or even do you use alternate service or app? Please do comment and see you next week.

Link to read and references.

http://bit.ly/1gy62RC - Microsoft and the Commoditization of Software.

http://oreil.ly/1eGMI0D - What Is Web 2.0 - O'Reilly Media.

http://oreil.ly/RixVEv - Software Above the Level of a Single Device - O'Reilly Radar.

http://bit.ly/1gy6Sha - Can Mobile Move Beyond Hardware and Software? - Dice News.