We know Windows is done, anything past version 7 is just crap and non sense, it's over. People have moved on to greener pasture.

But for Office the failed Windows strategy of late is repeating itself. Microsoft's strategy for Office goes as follows : they know they won't get many corporate people to adopt their Office 365 offerings because that almost certainly implies the files have to be stored on Microsoft servers, and that alone is a basic privacy issue.

Since it cannot work, Microsoft is trying to get the consumer part of the market embarked in so-called "touch-first" (read : dumbed down) versions of their 3 or 4 flag ship products in the Office suite, thinking that may trickle down into corporate purchase policies 5 years down the road. But they are shooting themselves in the foot. First of all touch-first proves simplified, not simple. Even for consumption purposes, small screens and even tablets are simply not the best reading devices. It gets worse. In the touch-first world, Microsoft also disables what has been the crown jewels for decades, which are VBA macros and add-ins. They are simply not there so be ready for your spreadsheets to officially not work even though you open them in a Microsoft product labelled as Office. For two decades, Microsoft has bragged about their compatibility capabilities, but now with the touch-first version they are killing it. Somebody or something has to give. Customers are not stupid, they will soon realize the trick. And no amount of PR will ease it.

So we've got left with the desktop version of Office, dubbed Office 2016. We are not sure yet about the system requirements, but Microsoft isn't stupid, they will probably allow this to install on Windows 7 machines, because otherwise they would put themselves at risk of cutting their own legacy customers and, in the end, their bottom line. But Excel 2016 is cluttered with features that belong to products that are for a different market : Excel 2016 tries so much to justify the upgrade that Microsoft ends up putting a lot of features that are duplicates of features found elsewhere instead of making once for all Excel a credible calculator (it can't add two numbers properly, just ask mathematicians).

For these reasons, it's quite clear that Office bright days are over and that the first victims will be the hordes of Office consultants and developers, they will be soon unemployed, followed by Microsoft themselves in a few years.

Boy it has been a fun ride...