“Organizations are wasting money licensing Microsoft Office applications that the majority of employees barely use, a study released this week by application analytics startup SoftWatch has found,” John E. Dunn reports for CIO. “The firm carried out a 3-month analysis of Office suite use in 51 global firms representing 148,500 employees, revealing that seven out of ten employees weren’t using any single application heavily, launching them only for viewing or light editing.”
“The average employee spent only 48 minutes per day using Office, largely the Outlook email client, which consumed about 68 percent of that activity,” Dunn reports. “Excel was in second place with 17 percent, or an average of 8 minutes per day, leaving Word and PowerPoint trailing with only 5 minutes and 2 minutes per day each.”
“What the study seems to be telling us is that the age of the all-purpose Office suite based on monolithic licensing has probably had its day because most users simply don’t use applications often enough to justify the cost,” Dunn reports. “In SoftWatch’s view, the obvious answer is that organisations should start by moving inactive users – 70 percent in the case of Word and 30 percent for Excel – off those applications in favour of cheaper alternatives.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Sleep tight, Satya.
Related articles:
Computerworld’s Evans: ‘For many, iWork is the only productivity solution you’ll ever need’ – April 2, 2014
Apple shows Keynote users more love with significant point update – April 2, 2014
Apple updates iWork for Mac, iOS, and iCloud – April 2, 2014
Associated Press: Don’t overlook Apple’s iWork – March 5, 2014
LAPTOP Magazine reviews Apple’s iWork for OS X: A compelling content creation platform – November 20, 2013
Hands on: Using Apple’s new iWork for iCloud collaboration tools – November 15, 2013
Apple releases next-gen 64-bit iWork and iLife apps for OS X and iOS; free with new Macs and iOS devices – October 22, 2013