Excel
The Microsoft Office Paradox
Love it or hate it (and people do!) Millions of users are familiar with desktop products such as Excel, and many people have found a talent for programming macros to get these applications to do perform really useful tasks
In fact, most of the products of the Office suite (including Access and Word, but excluding Outlook and InfoPath) become victims of their own success as these macro-style programs are adopted into line of business applications.
The inevitable result is that IS departments dislike these apps and are often reluctant to support or re-develop them. This leaves companies with a dilemma about their spreadsheet strategy. On the one hand users are relying on them, on the other IS struggle to support them.
The Alternatives
Storm Software, through its various clients, have lots of experience of Office applications, and are able to help clients implement these solutions:
- Formalise a policy for the lifetime of the application, and during that lifetime, become expert in developing and supporting such applications. This may require some re-development within Office itself, using formal programming methods
- Use connecting mechanisms such as Web Services, to shift functionality (business rules) away from the Office application, thus making it a 'thinner' and more manageable client
- Re-write the application from scratch, using the best tools and platforms
- Employ SpreadHawk™ technology to expand a single Excel spreadsheet into a powerful server-based calculation engine