Exclusive: A first look at the “Agave” apps for Office 2013
Back in March this year, we reported that Microsoft was readying a Office web extensions platform called “Agaves”, which allows developers will be able to create an area within Office applications that lets webpages interact …
Context & Ripple Effects
In March 2012, The Verge reported exclusively that Microsoft's next Office would ship with a third-party web extensions platform codenamed 'Agaves', letting developers carve out areas inside Office applications where webpages could interact with documents. LiveSide's new screenshots are the first concrete look at those apps running, arriving just ahead of the rumored July 16 public unveiling of Office 15 that USA Today has reported.
First-order effects
- Developers finally have a visible target: the screenshots turn an abstract platform announcement into specific app surfaces they can start building against inside Word, Excel, and the rest of the Office 2013 lineup.
- Microsoft gains a developer-facing story for the Office 2013 reveal, framing the suite as extensible rather than a closed set of desktop applications.
Second-order effects
- Third-party web services gain a distribution channel straight into the document workflow, letting providers reach Office users without building standalone integrations or waiting on Microsoft to expose each data source.
- Existing Office companion tools and browser-based workarounds that sat outside the application now compete with functionality embedded directly in the canvas, pressuring vendors whose value was proximity to the document.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, Office shifts from a self-contained suite toward a platform whose utility is defined by third-party apps layered on top — a structural change in how productivity software is built, sold, and extended, echoing Microsoft's earlier web-document experiments such as Office Live Workspace back in 2007.
The trend: Productivity suites are reopening as platforms for third-party web apps, with Microsoft using Office 2013's Agave extensions to pull outside services into the document itself.