Microsoft Office – power to Windows and order from chaos

15Aug/060

Microsoft Office – power to Windows and order from chaos

Today's look at the eWeek top 25 technologies brings us to number 24, Microsoft Office . Yes, the grand champion of the office suites that everyone seems to use. Back in the day, though, there was a mess in the world of integrated office suites.

I started my professional career in computers in 1987. Prior to that my experience was in house and learned on my own. 1987 saw my start in a computer related field where I was paid a salary.

Back then you had to be nimble. These were the days of DOS, so there were literally 20 choices for word processing programs, and it seemed like everyone in the company had their own. Our company officially supported Display Write 4 from IBM, but that didn't stop people from using Word Perfect , Sprint and even, gasp, Word Star . You had to be nimble to support these programs and, more importantly, their print drivers. Spreadsheets were standardized with Lotus 123 , while database programs were controlled by dBase . Toss in the presentation software Freelance by Lotus, and you had an office suite.

I guess at this point it'd be good to explain what an office suite is for those who don't know. An office suite is a compilation of software packages for handling business tasks. They always include a word processor, spreadsheet and presentation software. More than likely, they also include a database. In the late 1980s this term was unknown, but in the 1990s it exploded.

The explosion was thanks to Microsoft Windows 3.1 and the interface it brought to light. Instead of wondering how your documents looked, you could actually see how they'd look through the WYSIWYG interface. Marvelous.

In corporate life, Windows 3.1 was just a curiousity. By this time we had a fantastic LAN system based on the MS-DOS 6.0 operating system as a client. We had a dynamite menu package called MarxMenu for launching the standard applications of Word Perfect, Lotus 123, Freelance and Paradox. Heck, we even had a neat batch system for tracking license usage, which made sure we were never above our limits.

As Windows 3.1 starting popping up in the company we began a process for testing and rolling out to those who asked. Administrative assistants were the first to ask for it, and that was fantastic since they provide excellent feedback. Though their feedback we found they wanted more applications that used the WYSIWYG interface. Our task then turned to finding an office suite.

When Windows 3.1 was announced there was only one product that could handle the WYSIWYG and the integration between applications needed. Oh, yeah, integration. This was critical, and quite frankly, one of the great features on Windows. You could take a spreadsheet, embed it into a word processing document and when any changes were made to the spreadsheet, the word processor document would automatically update.

Anyway, the only product was Microsoft Office. For some reason Word Perfect, Lotus and Borland were all flat footed when it came to adopting Windows 3.1. Microsoft saw the market for products and trounced them all. The world has never looked back, which is why Microsoft Office is among the best selling software products ever.