The Sikh Geek

I was at the Microsoft Partner Community Day yesterday at the Novotel Hotel, West London. It was a really interesting event as I got to see more of Vista and the 2007 Microsoft Office system. I’m always impressed by the Aero interface, with the Flip 3D features. I believe this will become more than just ‘eye candy’ and that new applications will have new ways of displaying and manipulating information. For a small business, if they can find information quicker and work more efficiently, then that is a big benefit. The 2007 Microsoft Office system (apparently it is not ‘Office 2007′ because Microsoft wants to convey that it’s more than just Word, Excel, Powerpoint!), has a new interface with a ‘ribbon’ that goes across the top, a live preview system before you apply settings and a gallery of options which are context sensitive.

The question is that most people use between 10-20% of the features of Office 2003, then with all these new features how much will small businesses make use of the new functionality. Of course, it is up to IT Consultants like myself to support people to make the best use of their investment and to help organisations use technology to automate their processes. Microsoft’s own research in to the small business marketplace identifies that only a small percentage of companies will embrace the newest technology straightaway and that the majority of small business owners just want to do the basic things well! As Office has about 90% market penetration, then it is not a question of ‘if’ but ‘when’ to migrate to the new offerings.

In the coming months, I will be looking at how these new technologies will aid the small business owner to do his day-to-day tasks better and faster!