14 DAY TRIAL // Satya Nadella’s persuasive attitude has brought Microsoft another important client for its Office suite, as South Korean electronics giant Samsung has recently decided to install Word in all its offices across the world.
The official announcement has come today, only a few days after Nadella met with Lee Jay-yong, vice chairman of Samsung Electronics, to discuss not only Redmond’s plans to expand in Korea, but also the lawsuit which allegedly claims that Samsung refused to pay its Android royalties since September 2013.
Nadella has, however, managed to convince Samsung to drop its very own JungUm Global productivity suite that it has been using since 1994 and switch to Microsoft Word, with the Korean citing the wide support for documents format as the main reason for this decision.
The change will take place on January 1, 2015, but Samsung’s offices will gradually move to Word, the company says in the announcement released today.
"Since MS Word supports almost all operating systems, such as Windows, Android and Linux, our staff can also work in a smart manner through PC, smartphones, and tablets," the company notes.
"Microsoft Office Word has over 90 percent of the global market share: It is the most compatible of documents for global business," a Samsung spokesman adds. "It will provide a smooth working environment for global projects, thanks to its interconnectivity with Microsoft Excel and Microsoft PowerPoint, as well."
JungUm Global will stay alive forever
Even though Samsung will thus make the switch to Microsoft Word and stop using its own JungUm Global productivity solution, the company won’t abandon it for the time being.
The South Korean says in the announcement that a consumer relations center will open until 2019 to provide business clients with support for the productivity suite, while consumers can continue using it forever, without any support date being prepared right now.
The end of support will, however, come at some point, Samsung admits, but users can continue running it even beyond this milestone.
Samsung first developed JungUm Global in 1992, but all its offices adopted the productivity suite two years later to work with documents and spreadsheets. Since then, several important updates have been provided to add better compatibility with new operating systems, but work on the product will end once Microsoft Word is adopted.
JungUm Global is not yet capable of running on Windows 8, and Samsung does not plan to add support for this OS version before January, when it plans to switch to Word.