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June - 2009 - issue > Tech Tracker

Microsoft to Kill 10-year-old Office 2000

Eureka Bharali
Monday, June 1, 2009
Eureka Bharali
The software giant Microsoft's Office 2000 application suite is drawing to an end by 14th July, as it will complete the 10-year term. The company had launched Office 2000 in June 1999, and for any of its business software Microsoft ensures support for a term of 10 years; mainstream support for first five years and limited support for the next five years.

Microsoft will block its extended support for its Office Update and the users would be redirected to a new Microsoft Update site, which will be introduced on August 1. Exclusion from the support suite would imply no issue fixes for 2000, even if the issue is a critical vulnerability, and the software firm expects the users to move on to a newer suite. The company has also turned off its mainstream support for Microsoft 2003 and Windows XP in April. The support for Windows XP, which still holds 69 percent of market share, had been extended to seven years in consideration of its market position and it ended in April.

The Office 2000 closure and the turn off of mainstream support for Office 2003 can be a boon for the players with applications in the cloud like Google and Zoho. It would be more feasible for the users of Office 2000 to migrate to a Google Doc or a Zoho Doc than upgrading to Office 2007 that comes with a price tag of Rs.14, 000. Experts believe that even new players like Docverse, an online document sharing and collaboration platform and Sliderocket, an online presentation designer and manager would be successful in turning some Office 2000 users, who comprise of 15 percent of the total MS Office users, towards them. So, the shutdown may not turn out to be a win-win situation for Microsoft.

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