The Microsoft Office package of programs contains many useful tools and has held a commanding market position for decades. Recently, however, they have been under threat from newer programs that offer extra features and more flexibility. As a result they have been buying companies that can help to enrich their products and bring them new competitive advantages. The latest purchase is LiveLoop and will bring improvements to PowerPoint.
The new acquisition will provide really beneficial technology that PowerPoint users will really appreciate. Instead of having to send large documents to people the LiveLoop technique converts them into URLs so they can be shared and viewed easier. This increases accessibility a huge amount and also means that materials can be viewed on a huge range of different devices regardless of the operating system (OS) they use.
Another great feature of the technology is that everybody can view documents at the same time and they will all change when the main one does. This means that in classrooms, boardrooms and other settings people automatically keep up rather than having to click themselves. It also makes it much easier to keep notes because any amendments that are made can be saved on each device rather than having to receive an updated version.
LiveLoop will be ceasing their existing operations on April 24th so current users need to download any presentations they want to save before then as afterwards they will be permanently deleted. Microsoft Office programs will be undergoing development in coming months as new features are introduced to make them more useful to users.
The LiveLoop acquisition follows on from the purchase of Sunrise in February and Acompli in December 2014. The first of these is a calendar application whilst the second was a mobile email app developer. Both point to the fact that Microsoft is looking to develop native apps for its devices. LiveLoop also shows they are seeking to create better web based features for products.