According to Forrester Research companies use Microsoft Word out of habit, not necessity . The crux of the matter is that "Word has become so entrenched in the enterprise in the last 25 years, organizations cannot easily move off of it".

It goes on to explain how new and emerging web-based tools "make sharing documents and online collaboration more intuitive and easier for users" and are more cost effective.

This is a surprise?

The key point here is "25 years". That's a lot of familiarity. Newer tools may indeed provide better sharing and collaboration, but my experience is that most everyone in a big company has at least worked around that problem. And many have gone further than that: building business applications and processes that incorporate parts of Office. (I actually designed and built such a system many years ago - we used OLE to manipulate Microsoft Word and create complex sales illustrations with locked and editable sections.)

The web-based tools undoubtedly argue that they will be cheaper because they cost less. What about the costs of switching? Re-training? I have been using word processors for close to 30 years. I really like Apple's Pages word processor, too. But when I have to do something beyond basic document creation, I go right back to Word. Not because Pages can't do the same things, but because I don't know how to do them the Pages way.

Some argue that Microsoft has created a switching problem of their own by re-arranging the user interfaces in Vista and Office 2007. Michael Horowitz has a great post about this on the Computerworld blog.

I love web-based collaboration tools. We're working with a leader in this field and are extremely excited about what can be done by bringing together structured data (like complex security information), unstructured data (like Word documents) and have it all hosted in a (very) secure environment. Time will tell when new, web-based models will overcome familiarity and become the standard ... for the next 25 years.

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