Microsoft Money Future Development, Any Thoughts?

I've been thinking about this for awhile now and wonder where this product
will go from here. Dick Watson in one of his posts mentions that possibly
Microsoft is working on a total reworking of the program ala Money 98 when
they moved to the Jet Engine Database which allowed them more opportunities
to expand the offerings of the program, which in turn saw the file size
increase rapidly. It seems that with each upgrade and with normal usage as
well the file sizes have been increasing rather steadily and before we know
it by 2010 (if Money is still around), we could be looking at 100mg MS
Money data files. :) With this is mind, Microsoft will have to somehow
contain this growth as it seems Quicken products don't have this problem
(or is not as pronounced possibly). How can they stem this tide? Develop
a new database engine rather than rely on the Jet Engine or possibly
develop one based on MSDE?

Possibly they could be radical and develop one base version for all users
regardless of region which contains only the register, debt and budget
sections and users would then be able to download additional modules such
as the investment portfolio, retirement, lifetime planner, which would be
tailored regionally. Also, rather than racing with Quicken to slap out a
new version each year which provides little new, they can instead focus on
putting out versions every 2 to 3 years and issue appropriate patches to
repair errors. I don't know if this module system would work with Money
but at least it would offer scalability and uniformity throughout the
platform and possibily eliminate the inability to port from one region to
another without having to qif export and import your Money file and
watching all of it turn into a morass.

Also some are speculating they may move to an online subscription model ala
Money Plus via the MSN website. It is hard enough convincing people of the
safety of online banking and Microsoft's oh so secure Passport system, the
possibility of entrusting one's financial records to an online server will
be next to impossible. Though some of it may be convenient, such as
portability, the fact remains the majority of clients prefer to have a copy
of the software and any files created, on a local system. Some I'm sure
would move to an online system but a large number will retain their last MS
Money program till the end of time or move to another program.

Just a thought. Is it possible that Microsoft continues to develop Money
at a loss because the purchasers of Money happen to be of a certain
demographic, ie. financially stable, well educated people who are more
likely to retain or upgrade to other Microsoft programs rather than go
elsewhere? Why not sell Money for $15 when you can get them to buy
Windows/Office XP later for significantly more money.

Will
Mon Jul 21 13:06:51 CDT 2003

I agree with this 100%

If MS would keep money on the same track as say Office and do service packs,
as they do with office, it would help things a great deal.

I know that laws change when it comes to finance, but I would not think it
would be a big deal to allow a service pack to fix these issues each year.

And as far as the "free" items that MS offers with Money, I would not have a
problem paying for Bill Pay after the first free year. Now if someone did
purchase the Premium version, then they would still have Bill Pay for the 2
years until the next release of Money.

It could save MS some $$ if they would wait.

"HEY Microsoft! Spend time on this program! Fix the Bugs! Listen to what
users are wanting! Make us WANT to upgrade because of something new, not
hoping that the old problems are fixed!"


"mak" <levack@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:8v2ohvsmcp76a09fni02qd6h59jds47m00@4ax.com...
> I've been thinking about this for awhile now and wonder where this product
> will go from here. Dick Watson in one of his posts mentions that possibly
> Microsoft is working on a total reworking of the program ala Money 98 when
> they moved to the Jet Engine Database which allowed them more
opportunities
> to expand the offerings of the program, which in turn saw the file size
> increase rapidly. It seems that with each upgrade and with normal usage
as
> well the file sizes have been increasing rather steadily and before we
know
> it by 2010 (if Money is still around), we could be looking at 100mg MS
> Money data files. :) With this is mind, Microsoft will have to somehow
> contain this growth as it seems Quicken products don't have this problem
> (or is not as pronounced possibly). How can they stem this tide? Develop
> a new database engine rather than rely on the Jet Engine or possibly
> develop one based on MSDE?
>
> Possibly they could be radical and develop one base version for all users
> regardless of region which contains only the register, debt and budget
> sections and users would then be able to download additional modules such
> as the investment portfolio, retirement, lifetime planner, which would be
> tailored regionally. Also, rather than racing with Quicken to slap out
a
> new version each year which provides little new, they can instead focus on
> putting out versions every 2 to 3 years and issue appropriate patches to
> repair errors. I don't know if this module system would work with Money
> but at least it would offer scalability and uniformity throughout the
> platform and possibily eliminate the inability to port from one region to
> another without having to qif export and import your Money file and
> watching all of it turn into a morass.
>
> Also some are speculating they may move to an online subscription model
ala
> Money Plus via the MSN website. It is hard enough convincing people of
the
> safety of online banking and Microsoft's oh so secure Passport system, the
> possibility of entrusting one's financial records to an online server will
> be next to impossible. Though some of it may be convenient, such as
> portability, the fact remains the majority of clients prefer to have a
copy
> of the software and any files created, on a local system. Some I'm sure
> would move to an online system but a large number will retain their last
MS
> Money program till the end of time or move to another program.
>
> Just a thought. Is it possible that Microsoft continues to develop Money
> at a loss because the purchasers of Money happen to be of a certain
> demographic, ie. financially stable, well educated people who are more
> likely to retain or upgrade to other Microsoft programs rather than go
> elsewhere? Why not sell Money for $15 when you can get them to buy
> Windows/Office XP later for significantly more money.

Dick
Mon Jul 21 13:22:02 CDT 2003

Bear in mind that this speculation on my part, about M04 being a placeholder
while a more radical re-engineering is in the oven, is purely that--I'm
looking for a positive explanation of why the Money team has done so little
in 11 months of development for M04.

There are other possible explanations:

1) They think that it's already a mature product that is more than their
target market for the product can deal with as is without adding more
features. (The regulars in the NG are probably not at the sweet spot of the
target market. And yes, we can crank out wish lists--but many of our wishes
are to fundamentally change the character of the product from something more
like, say, Bob, to something more like, say, Excel.)

2) They are diverting resources to a future web based service subscription
offering and will allow classic Money to wither away.

3) They are ceding the market share battle to Intuit.

It's far from clear that Microsoft (or any of us users, frankly) see data
file size as a discriminator issue. Capacity of every one of the tools I use
except the floppy backup continue to exceed my Money file requirements by a
wide margin and they are still growing at a faster rate than my Money file
which has grown almost 20% in this last, tenth, year. (It is scary what the
file growth rate might be at Money 2010.)

I have wondered about the MSDE angle as well. I'm not sure many of us are
ready for that--since it's not really file -centric. But the strategic
future of the Jet-based engines at Microsoft is not clear. Maybe they have
to get off it since it's ultimately going away?

As to the modularity of the product, I'm betting that internally it already
is pretty much this way. I think the issues come down to the cost to
localize vs. market for the localizations and a perceived lack of business
case for supporting any better migration scheme across localized versions
than the QIF dance.

As to the notion of Money being a loss leader to attract an upscale
demographic to other Microsoft products, my bet is that any effect like that
has pretty much played itself out already. How many people in that
demographic don't already have PCs and so forth? (And maybe this is part of
the dynamic. To increase market share now, they need to get new Money users
from the pool of grandmothers and poor people who have not yet made a
decision about personal finance management software. Those folks are not
likely to be attracted to a product offering database extensibility and
great new investment asset allocation management tools.)

JunkMonkey
Tue Jul 22 15:53:06 CDT 2003

Mak,

I agree with you 100%. I WILL have my personal accounting running on
software that is installed on MY PC. And that software will be capable of
doing everything it needs to do without connecting to the internet. This is
non negotiable.

There are thousands of people out there capable of writing home accounting
software using Delphi, or FoxPro, or even MS Access. If MS Money "morphs"
into some sort of internet subscription service, you'll see all sorts of
packages available.


"mak" <levack@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:3q4rhvsfurqodld0huvnuvcjbb6gtgqlo3@4ax.com...
> On Mon, 21 Jul 2003 20:28:47 -0400, Mike Oplinger <mroplinger@comcast.net>
> wrote:
>
> Here are some thoughs, hope they make sense. :)
>
> >I agree that M04 is a "placeholder" while something more fundamental is
> >going on in the market. In my previous post I speculated that Microsoft
> >may be focusing energy on the "Money Plus" functionality in the new MSN
> >8.0, and perhaps pursuing a subscription model where the "Money"
> >functionality is an add-on to the monthly subscription charge for MSN.
> >There has been much concern expressed regarding the notion of all of us
> >running our checkbook on microsoft servers. While I agree with the
> >privacy/security concerns, there are many other points to consider here:
>
> Until they repair this notion of privacy/security concerns on micosoft
> servers, that concern will always be there. Microsoft seems to speak with
> both sides of their mouth concerning this. They go on and on about
> security yet their Passport system is often hacked, this they said would
be
> highly unlikely to occur. Well it does occur and I don't particularly
feel
> safe with that notion. Mind you I have no idea if my bank's servers are
> being hacked all the time because it's not given out but at least I have a
> known relationship with my bank who are willing to cover me if something
> goes wrong, would Microsoft give me that same assurance?
>
> >1) let's not forget that the application components could be delivered
> >as applets from an MSN server, with the data still residing on the local
> >client. MSN has a dbsynch.dll module already deployed that synchs local
> >mail, calendar, contacts, and I'm sure many other types of "local" data.
>
> Bill Gate's much hyped pledged for "security" has been till now rather
> hollow. Gaps are being found on a routine basis in software which is
> deemed to be highly secure. Yes I understand that no software is perfect,
> but for example, the buffer overrun thing has been around for ages and yet
> it still keeps popping up like a bad ad. If they are incapable of fixing
> this glaring error even in their most recent versions, I can hardly be
> thrilled to entrust my financial information to one of their servers. Now
> with the development of the new operating system for 2005 which will lock
> down your computer into a mini-fort knox this may work, but I don't
> particularly like the fact that the hardware/software people will tell me
> how to keep my system rather than I doing it myself.
>
> >2) all the data is already out there on someone elses server - i.e. your
> >bank, checkfree, Equifax credit bureau, etc. And it is easily shared
> >and consolidated across multiple accounts at many different banks by web
> >services such as yodlee - which is used by the moneyplus deployment on
> >MSN, as well as Fidelity, Wachovia, and many other banks. This provides
> >you a way to see all of your accounts "in one place". So nothing all
> >that new here, right? - it's already out there.
>
> Well it's not available widely in Canada and much of the rest of the world
> so basically if you are not a U.S. customer you are screwed if they go to
a
> subscription model. I am not thrilled that all this data is floating
> around and many are starting to feel the same way, particurly in Europe
> which is implementing and discussing tougher privacy rules regarding the
> transfer of and storage of information. Just because it's not nothing new
> doesn't mean people shouldn't feel concerned that this information is out
> there for anyone to just grab and as a matter of fact, I think people
> should be even more concerned that it is so easy to get that information.
>
> >3) There are potential functionality advantages, core to good
> >architecture of any software, of not duplicating your banking in two
> >places, i.e. locally. One copy of the data means a "single version of
> >the truth" (if you trust your bank) No more
> >synchronization/reconciliation problems and chores associated with
> >balancing your "money" register, with what your bank says would be a
> >plus to me - I wouldn't have to go to my bank's website anymore to see
> >if my money balances were still correct.
>
> Well I neither trust my bank nor Microsof in any regard. The fact is that
> if the information is entered by hand then errors are more readily found
> rather than it simply being pushed down the pipeline. Banks and people
are
> never perfect, at least then one or the other is bound to find the
> mistakes.
>
> >I seriously doubt that Microsoft will abandon this market and cede share
> >to intuit. They already have the better product. I suspect that the
> >strategic race is how to better integrate with other web-services,
> >specifically with the financial services providers like your bank or
> >broker, in a way that makes the whole experience easier and more
> >convenient for the customer. Moving to a web services architecture may
> >be part of that strategic direction for the product that will finally
> >get the quicken users to switch to what is a fundamentally superior
> >product. It will be interesting to learn more about Quicken 2004 and
> >see if that provides any clues to the "race".
> >
> >Again this all speculation.
> >
>
> Well with rumours circulating that IE 6 will be the last standalone
version
> and instead it will be fully integrated into the operating system there
may
> be little choice but move to a subscription version since Money relies so
> heavy on IE. But many people are not online and will not go online, many
> do not have broadband access since dial up is fine with them, suddenly a
> large part of the market is out. I highly doubt Quicken users will switch
> to a superior product because it's web based. As a matter of fact Quicken
> users are likely to switch because of decisions by Intuit to force users
to
> access web based services that have little to no additional value for
those
> who have already paid to purchase the software. I won't get into the
entire
> converting of Quicken files to a Money webbased service suffice it to say
> that even with software located locally it's not often pretty. Maybe
10-20
> years from now the subscription model may work once everyone is online,
> using broadband, but till then packaged software will have a place on our
> desktop and there is no point in alienating consumers who already feel
> alienated enough by the ever dizzying pace of technolgy.