As a clear strategic shift towards cloud computing and recognising the effect that Google Apps has had on Microsoft office products, by offering a web based office suite of productivity tools that enable users to benefit from hosted applications and best of all… its FREE, Microsoft has announced that it will be launching Office Web Applications. This is basically a hosted version of Microsoft Office!

Microsoft Office is still the default productivity suite of choice my businesses globally, and one may argue that this is due to lack of education with respect to Open Source or free application.

This product will undoubtedly shake up the industry and will further drive an awareness towards cloud computing. Is this proof that Microsoft realises that they need to adapt or die?