Office launch has dual focus - Attractive price and software as service

[Nick]

In a duel attempt to fight piracy and protect its market share from rivals, Microsoft will launch Office 2010 with an average price-per-user of 1,000 baht, while preparing for the first time to bundle its Office Starter Edition with computer vendors and set its roadmap into the cloud.

Microsoft (Thailand) Managing Director Patama Chantaruck launches Microsoft Office 2010 last week.

In this fiscal year, which starts next month, Microsoft will focus on promoting Office 2010, one of its flagship products which contributes around 40 percent of the company's total revenue, by targetting consumers who may be tempted to buy pirated versions, and protecting its market share of 87 percent, said Patama Chantaruck, Managing Director, Microsoft (Thailand).

Office 2010 Home& Student version will be released in Thailand tomorrow at 3,250 baht for three licenses, which the company believes is a very attractive price compared to the previous release, Office 2007, which sold for as much as 5,000 baht.

She admitted that there is pirate market that sells copies at 100-300 baht but said the legal version, at little more than 1,000 baht, offers better value because it comes with support. And the company will launch a promotion price for early adopters at Commart June 24-27. Customer who buy the product at this time will get free Thai language menus and support.

Moreover, over the next six months, the company will for the first time pre-bundle its Office suite with computer vendors, albeit in the form of Office Starter Edition, which provides Microsoft Word and Excel. Consumers can opt to buy additional Office features.

Microsoft will also offer alternative channels to enable consumers to access its products more conveniently, including buying online or opting for home delivery and paying at convenience stores.

In Thailand, more than 67,000 users have downloaded the Office 2010 beta version and over 50 partners are already building solutions for the 2010 set of products.

One of the highlights for this launch is Office Web Apps, which enables users to access the application through their browser without installing software in, but this is only for customers who have purchased Office volume licensing. Customers will be able to purchase a subscription to Office Web Apps as part of Microsoft Online Services, Microsoft's cloud-based applications.

This gives customers more flexibility of choice and reduces their expenses.

"In this way, it also helps Microsoft to reduce duplicate uses of licenses," said Patama.

In Thailand, Microsoft sees a lot of opportunity because plenty of enterprises still use Office 2003, which will need to be upgraded as hardware reaches the end of its lifecycle.

Within one year, the company expects 50 percent of this user group will have moved to Office 2010.

To date, 17 companies in Thailand have been early adopters of this new technology including Thai Airways, SCG Bank, Nok Air, Bualuang Securities, and Bank of Thailand, among others.

In the meantime, the company is also planning to introducing various products into the cloud with it Software+Service vision, such as Office 2010 and SQL Azure which is a cloud-based relational database server offering databases as a service, and Customer Relation Management (CRM).

The company expects that government, small and medium-sized enterprises will be potential targets that will be interested in using its cloud services.

Microsoft will prepare its infrastructure in order to provide its software in the cloud in various choices for customers ranging from Microsoft-hosted services to partner- hosted ones, including Internet Thailand, and customers which host themselves in the private cloud.

In South East Asia, Thailand, the Philippines, Indonesia and Vietnam have still not yet rolled out cloud services due to having not established infrastructure readiness.

Moreover, Microsoft needs to prepare for legal framework and policy in Thailand to protect customer interests.

While uplift its exiting partners who ready to transit their business model from traditional license to subscription model and acquire to build new partners that have new capabilities.

Furthermore, Microsoft's service team will encourage its partners to sell its services as an additional revenue stream to make up for a potential reduction in hard-copy sales when when the subscription model gains a bigger customer base.

"We have to admit that in this new fiscal year, Microsoft's expected growth of 22 percent is a bit lower than our target of 36 percent, due to the political situation," said Patama.

"However the crisis made businesses realise IT is vital to business continuity."

About the author


Writer: Suchit Leesa-nguansuk
Position: Reporter

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