Scott Kveton

I’ve got OpenOffice on-the-brain today. I already talked about the value proposition of OpenOffice, now I want to talk about some ideas for the future of the application. Note: these are just my random musings but I get full credit for them when they happen!!! (I say this because of the now infamous-in-my-mind Apple DVR posting I did that actually became a reality).

Alright, so I digress. I think we would all agree that Firefox kicks ass. So why has it been so successful? What is it exactly that has triggered the 120 million downloads of Firefox?

Firefox can (and I’ll probably get some grief from folks on this) attribute most of its success to Microsoft. Microsoft has yet to really “get” the Internet. The answer has always been “let’s hook exciting-new-technology X into Windows”. However, not everybody wants to run Windows and looking across the emerging markets it doesn’t even make sense to run Windows. A Windows license can cost the good part of someones annual income in certain emerging markets. The fact that Internet Explorer has been the Swiss cheese of applications and it was tied to directly to the operating system helped matters even more. De-coupling any application from your operating system is just a smart thing to do. It’s like layers of defense; you wouldn’t stitch your clothes directly to your skin, would you?! What if you spilled something on your clothes?! Do you know how painful it would be to put yourself through a spin cycle?! Alright, so we get it. Microsoft, through poor execution on its Internet strategy, has helped paved the way for Firefox. What else?

Quick and painless features. Firefox has gone through several major revisions in the last two years. Each revision gets us more features, better functionality and increased security. User input is leveraged to make a better browser. Shortening the transaction time from developer innovation to end-user satisfaction is the “secret sauce” that enables open source and has helped make Firefox so great. The other advantage of this is a better reaction to the market. It’s probably best known as the v2.0 problem (I say best known because I don’t know another term for it so I made one up). The v2.0 problem refers to the translation of user input to actual software. You develop v1.0 based on some user requirements and then you actually get them in front of it for what’s called v1.0. Then the users have this what can best be described as “duh” moment when they realize that they really wanted X, Y and Z. But they wouldn’t have ever learned that had they not had v1.0 to help make them realize that.

Customization. This is the biggie IMHO. Within the XUL extension framework, people can customize the heck out of their browser. It’s like leveraging the long tail for your browsing experience. You can build something that meets, say 60% of users’ needs but you need a great deal of customization to really meet the needs of those other 40% of users. So why not leverage those people? Well, Firefox has. Head over to Addons with your Firefox browser and see what they have to offer. You can customize your browser to your hearts content. And all at little incremental cost to Mozilla (after all they did have to develop the XUL framework in Firefox and build the Addons site).

Taking the customization piece even further, look at what a lot of these extensions for Firefox do. They connect your browser to web services that enable you to de-couple yourself from your desktop. Take a look at StumbleUpon, del.icio.us and even Outfoxed. Here we have some great web services that are directly built into a standards based web browser. We’re seeing this cottage industry form around Firefox that is enabling so many more people to take advantage and more importantly, make a living on-line. Looking specifically at Outfoxed, you’re talking about a web service that enables you to leverage your social network to have a better browsing experience. You just cannot accomplish that without the tools to connect users to each other.

Alright, so Firefox is great. You can see I feel pretty strongly about that. What does that have to do with OpenOffice? I’m glad you asked (technically you didn’t ask but you’re still reading this so I guess you did ask).

OpenOffice is in a unique position right now. I mentioned the value proposition and its a pretty attractive one IMHO. So why hasn’t OpenOffice taken off like Firefox? Especially given that the Firefox value proposition is replace browser costing $0 US with browser costing $0 US? Let’s compare the Firefox factors for success from above to OpenOffice and see what we find.

We’ll start by comparing Microsoft Office and its accompanying software to that of OpenOffice. MS Office is continuously being upgraded with new “features” that may or may not be wanted by the end users. At the end of the day, Microsoft is interested in selling more copies of Office and to do that they need to release new versions whether the users want it or not. The latest version of Microsoft Office on the horizon is code-named Office 12. The reports are pretty mixed. It appears that most reviewers love the new interface but drilling down into actual user comments we see a different story. We see that Microsoft is trying to innovate the user interface to give companies and users a reason to upgrade. However, doesn’t that mean they are creating an opportunity for someone like OpenOffice? There would be an incremental cost (in addition to the new licenses) on top of deploying MS Office 12 that would include user training and education. If an organization is going to have to eat that cost, why not just migrate directly to OpenOffice? I see this as an advantage for OpenOffice.

Next one on tap is how good is OpenOffice at delivering new and improved features to the end-users? Looking at their release schedule, I would say not so good. Advantage here would go to the existing Office suites. OpenOffice 2 has took quite some time to deliver although patches to the existing v.1.x suite have been quick and effective. The big question would be, how can you increase the pace of adapting to user needs, etc? I think the answer lies in how Firefox solved it; customization.

OpenOffice does have the ability to write things like templates and macros. Finding them is another story all together. And what about connecting OpenOffice to web services? If you had a simple framework, much like Firefox, you could enable all sorts of new tools and extensions for OpenOffice. This could help address the problem from above; getting new features and driving the product forward faster for the end-users. You would effectively be using the long tail to help drive adoption and use of OpenOffice. I think this could be the biggest driving force behind making OpenOffice the next killer app (and by killer I mean killing the incumbent).

“But why would I need web services for my productivity suite?! I’ve never needed them before!! Why now?!”, you say. Fair enough. I’ll give this a go. What if there was a web extension for OpenOffice and associated web service that allowed you to translate documents on the fly in real-time? You could collaborate with people from different countries and that speak different languages on the fly. What about collaborative tools? Wouldn’t it be great if you could “share” documents and truly collaborate on their editing via simple, easy-to-use tools that connected users to each other through the actual application? It is, after all, a freakin’ “productivity” suite … wouldn’t that make you more productive if you didn’t have to “track changes -> make edits -> send to collaborators -> accept changes -> repeat”?! The possibilities are limitless and more importantly we don’t even know the of the best extensions because they haven’t been created yet.

If OpenOffice could build a framework for enabling people to plug their own functionality into the application they would be perfectly poised to take advantage of the next major release of Microsoft Office that is going to force companies to incur a major transitional cost to deploy. The time is ripe and the opportunities for OpenOffice abound to innovate their way past the competition.