Steve Ballmer seems to have ruled out a launch of Office 14 this year (2009). Despite having given out a few ideas, discussions, and a short glimpse of what is to come at the PDC last year; which gave a few people the idea that it would be launched in 2009; Ballmer has decided that the time is not right, yet.

His decision appears to be based upon current economic trends in the main:

"Desktop productivity [is] very affected by PC sales," he said. "And on the corporate side, it’s also affected by enterprise IT spend."

As for the competition, such as OpenOffice and the various Google apps; he said: "We have the superior offering."

To tell you the truth I think he’s right about delaying the roll-out this year; but not solely for the reasons he stated.

There’s Office 97, which some people still use today, and also Office 2000, Office XP – which I use on 1 of my comps – despite it being no longer supported AFAIK, Office 2003, and Office 2007. That’s a lot of Office; bearing in mind the various flavours of each. Do we really need an Office 2009? I don’t think so honestly. 2007 is still a perfectly adequate and fully-functional version for today’s needs.

What they could do; and I’ve hinted at this before, but not on this blog yet, is to design a partially-cloud-oriented version of Office, based upon Office 2007 but with a lot more online interaction:-

Zipping + encrypting copies of documents and spreadsheets and keeping them in protected server databases online may be an idea, as would a departure from the CD or DVD to a more centrally-based suite, downloadable from Microsoft’s servers, on maybe a subscription-based system in addition to a pay-once-only fee?

I also think that some of the old apps in office should be downloadable online, for use with the new Office suite: Microsoft Photo Editor, for one. That app is something that I find invaluable; yet it’s not present in Office 2007. OK there’s Paint.net available as a download and totally separate from Office; but it’s just not the same.

With the new forthcoming operating system, Windows 7, Microsoft are at last concentrating on what their customers want rather than what they think is best for their customers: If they also did likewise with Office 14 I feel it would be a good move on their part.

There’s no mad rush for a new version of Office at the time being, and to all intents and purposes I feel that OpenOffice and the like have a lot of catching up to do for the time being. When Microsoft release their next Office suite I hope it’s going to be something sensational and on a parallel with Windows 7.

At the moment they’re giving their all to 7. When that’s released they can start putting equal efforts into Office 14. For the time being I’m sure nobody wants to rush out to buy another Office version. It’s just too soon, and Microsoft do tend to try and rush things too much if they feel pressured. As it is though, they have plenty of time on their hands in my opinion.

What do you think? – Agree? Disagree?  – Do comment.