In a recent article about free software, some assertions were made perhaps in error due to the lack of up-to-date information. The article attempted to depict some conspiracy by local retailers to suppress the fact that alternative software to that produced by vendors such as Microsoft exists and is freely available.
In the age of the internet, this is hardly a plausible situation: People are spending hours cruising the world's websites and encountering all forms of software. The article goes on to point out that companies like Microsoft make billions of dollars from their software. Indeed all software companies make products to make money - including companies like IBM and Google as well as others such as Oracle. It is common practice for a few to choose to make some software free.
It is worth mentioning some facts. Microsoft does indeed make money selling its software. However, it is also the company which invests more than any other ICT company in terms of research and development: In 2010 this investment will reach $9.5 billion. The beneficiaries of this R&D are the world's users and consumers of software, not to mention the hundreds of thousands of ICT companies that build their applications using software like Microsoft Office. It is through this tremendous investment in R&D that innovation is driven.
Without it for instance, we would not enjoy the benefit of mobile applications such as Office on smartphones. Neither would productivity and usability features be developed at the current pace of innovation - making the software so much easier to use and enabling us to be more productive.
Windows and Office come in a variety of editions - including a free edition for Windows (known as Windows Starter). Soon a free edition of Office, called Office Starter edition will become available on new computers in summer. The price tags of these products also vary and depend on whether you're a home user, a corporate organisation or an academic institution. For instance, a scheme is currently in place for students in Malta whereby Windows 7 Professional edition is available at €70 inclusive of VAT.
It is healthy that there are several alternatives and competition is crucial to drive innovation. A major innovation is the rise of cloud computing. Microsoft has been innovating in the cloud for several years and also delivers a broad set of incredible innovations many of which are free: Photosynth allows users to build three-dimensional renderings using digital photographs and is an ideal platform to develop a library of our historic heritage. Indeed this is a project which is happening in Malta (www.photosynth.net). Mesh enables a user to store and replicate information, picture, music and any other digital artefact across several devices such as computers, netbooks and smartphones over the cloud (www.mesh.com). Windows Live is a suite of services delivered over the cloud, which includes Hotmail. Today, 550 million people use this service. It allows you to store photo albums, blog, start-up virtual communities, use instant messaging, enable child online safety measures as well as use e-mail and use massive online storage using the Skydrive service which provides some 25 GB of free storage.
One of many key differences however for those people who do use Microsoft Office is that there is close integration between the suite and any of these cloud services.
This integration is coupled with another important factor which today many users of Microsoft software take for granted - support and manageability. In today's world, software needs to be upgraded for a variety of reasons, including patches for security against virus threats or to capitalise on new hardware capabilities.
Not all software packages provide an easy way to upgrade without having to de-install the older version and then re-installing the new. Free services such as Windows Update avoid all this and provide the user with a smooth experience requiring little if any intervention. So much so, that rarely do we realise that this upgrading and patching service is happening. This is a benefit not enjoyed by many software packages today.
Finally, it is important to focus briefly on interoperability. Interoperability is the capability of information or data created by a software package to be exported and used by a third party package. Microsoft software is based on international standards and it has also passed control of some of its core technologies to standards bodies such as ISO, as was the case with Open XML. Added to that, tools such as Microsoft Office today are able to generate and use standards such as ODF and PDF either natively or by using add-ons.
Microsoft provides a broad offering from the free to the sophisticated commercial tools for the corporate user. Its constant innovation will continue to set that benchmark for other players to gauge themselves against.
Free software will continue to drive the need to continue to innovate and create opportunities for other software companies as well as driving productivity to even higher heights.
Mr Mallia is country manager at Microsoft Malta.