Introduction
Microsoft Office is one of the prized innovations made by Microsoft in the late 20th Century. It has more than one billion customers all over the world, and the numbers are increasing with every passing year (Arghire, 2012). Every few years, Microsoft updates its Office suite to improve customer experience and make the software compatible with upgraded operating systems. Microsoft makes Office available in both desktop and mobile version, which has helped in making the software popular and widely used. The Microsoft Office suite consists of Excel, Word, PowerPoint, Access, OneNote, Outlook, Sway, etc. The latest Microsoft Office suite was MS Office 2016, which was released in the year 2015 and it is compatible with Windows OS and OS X. Based on the past trends, it is highly likely that Microsoft will introduce a new version of the Office suite. With all the latest news, it is possible that the next version would be MS Office 2020. This paper will perform a SWOT analysis of MS Office 2020.
SWOT Analysis
Strengths
Microsoft has already revealed the future they want to build by their Microsoft Vision 2020. The company envisions ‘Office Everywhere’, which would include universal applications that will be used to fill display space on devices. These universal applications are expected to make usability of Office applications easier and increase dependence of customers. More applications are expected to be launched that would increase customer usability. Microsoft Office is expected to be made available on the majority of the user platforms. The future versions of Microsoft Office would make customer experience much better. Also, Office 2020 would ensure that the inconsistent UI of Office mobile applications will be fixed. The promised improvement in the continuum mode would ensure that Office in tablet mode would become easier to use for customers (Hachman, 2015). With all these improvements already in place and Microsoft is planning to make Office universal, it is highly likely that MS Office 2020 will only become better than its previous versions.
Weaknesses
One of the biggest weaknesses of Microsoft has been its failure to overcome its problems with mobile. For the growth of MS Office 2020, it is important that it is effective on mobile platform and customers can easily use it. It is also important that MS Office checks out their UI and makes improvements to Office 2020 as the current UI has not been upgraded substantially (Miller, 2014). One of the biggest weaknesses of Microsoft Office has been the vulnerability of few applications such as Word, Excel and PowerPoint to virus attacks. Microsoft has to find means to overcome these minor glitches as it interrupts quality of user experience. In addition, creation of Meta files along with every MS Office application takes up space in the device. Customers who use office in mobile or tabs would not feel impressed with the amount of size taken by MS Office applications. MS Office 2020 needs to find ways to circumvent these challenges as they can become a problem in future.
Opportunities
Vision 2020 professed by Microsoft envisions several changes and upgrades to the current Office Suite available in the market. Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft has increased the company’s focus on mobile and cloud by prioritizing them. An important element of the future vision of Office 2020 is to develop apps that are useful to end users. Also, Microsoft has been analysing the large content of data prepared in their apps such as PowerPoint, Excel, Word, and other Office apps. Microsoft can also articulate on its vision 2020 and develop venerable productivity offerings to its 1.2 billion users all over the world. Other opportunities can be generated by breaking down Office suite and letting third party developers and users to match and mix capabilities. This would help in developing new ways of layering conversational interfaces that are presently quite far from the current Office suite (McCraken, 2016).
Threats
Microsoft faces threats from competition as alternatives are available to Office suite such as Google Docs, LibreOffice, NeoOffice, WordPerfect, etc. These competitors present significant threat to Office 2020 and they might present a more formidable challenge in the future. Another source of threat are viruses that Office is susceptible to at present and unless Microsoft is unable to overcome these challenges, it will face greater threats from competitors with better safety features. Security is a major concern for Office 2020 as there are several avenues that can be used for exploiting the Microsoft Office’s weaknesses. A Microsoft Office vulnerability has been patched up that was exploited by many APT (advanced persistent threat) actors. This vulnerability shows the ease with which threats can impact Office 2020 in the future and the importance they need to place of protecting their customers from such threats (Kovacs, 2016).
Conclusion
Microsoft Office 2020 is a vision that shows that the company is planning for the future by making the already popular and widely used Office suite easy to use, efficient, and clear of bugs. The strengths of Microsoft will come into play as it will keep developing new applications and improving already available applications in the suite by 2020.
Microsoft is expecting to overcome weaknesses of the current MS Office suite is it is expected develop better and more effective Office 2020 with less bugs, effective on mobile and cloud, and better UI. The opportunities that lie ahead for Microsoft office 2020 might come from Cloud and mobile based developments. Finally, threats come in the form of viruses and from fast developing competitors.
References
Arghire., I. (2012, 10 July). Microsoft’s Office Has over One Billion Users. Retrieved 12 July 2016 from, http://news.softpedia.com/news/Microsoft-s-Office-Has-Over-One-Billion-Users-280426.shtml
Hachman., M. (2015, 17 April). Microsoft showed us the future of Office, and here are the 5 things it must improve. Retrieved 11 June 2016 from, http://www.pcworld.com/article/2910987/microsoft-showed-us-the-future-of-office-and-here-are-the-5-things-it-must-improve.html
Kovacs., E. (2016, 25 May). Microsoft Office Flaw Exploited by Several APT Actors. Retrieved 11 June 2016 from, http://www.securityweek.com/microsoft-office-flaw-exploited-several-apt-actors
Miller., R. (2014, 16 May). Let’s Face It, Apple, Google, Facebook and Microsoft All Have Weaknesses. Retrieved 11 June 2016 from, http://techcrunch.com/2014/05/16/lets-face-it-apple-google-facebook-and-microsoft-all-have-weaknesses/
McCraken., H. (2016, 8 April). The Future Of Microsoft Office: Many Apps, Many Interfaces, Many Devices. Retrieved 11 June 2016 from, http://www.fastcompany.com/3058617/the-future-of-work/the-future-of-microsoft-office-many-apps-many-interfaces-many-devices
