Environmental analysis

Microsoft Office, Environmental analysis

 1. Industry forces

2. Key Trends

3. Macroeconomic Forces

4. Market Forces

Findings:

Until now, functionality has been the most important element, though things start changing and we see that the focus is now on convenience, ergonomics and a nice interface. There hasn’t been any significant technological evolutions. They worked hard on the interface and the design, but the functions that MS office offers do not differ that much of what they offered 5 to 10 years ago.

Illegal downloading, as well in Europe or in the US as in emerging countries such as China and India, is an important issue for Microsoft. The second big issue is that governments tend to pay more attention to software companies because of anti-trust issues.

If Microsoft manages to tackle the issue of illegal downloading in these emerging countries, they would be able to benefit from this huge market potential.We identified four main technology trends; open source software, cloud computing, portability and security. Open source (freeware) can be a threat in the long-run, but nowadays the open-source software lack power, security and ergonomics. Both cloud computing and portability are opportunities for Microsoft, because it is one of the key trends for the future.

MS Office doesn’t have any real substitutes, but few competitors who offers slightly the same solution. E.g, OpenOffice, iWork for Mac,.. Another group of competitors are the on-line editors, such as Google Docs.