What is Microsoft Outlook

That probably seems like a strange title for an article but if you’ll indulge me a few lines, I think you’ll understand why I posed that question.

Microsoft Outlook is, amongst other things, an email client, contact manager and calendaring tool. It has been marketed and sold my Microsoft as an application. It is part of the Microsoft Office family of application and I’m pretty sure that at most businesses and a lot of homes, it is the defacto standard for a lot of people when it comes to on-line interaction. Really though it is much, much more than just an application, don’t tell anyone but it is actually a platform.

Let me clarify what I mean by that. An application is a piece of code, large or small, that typically has one purpose. It allows users to accomplish a goal or goals. A platform has similarities with an application but the key difference is that a platform can be extended or built upon. A platform affords developers that ability to take it to another place, far from what the original designers of the platform might have intended.

But therein lies the beauty of it, it allows for extension, change, refinement and growth. All of which is typically impossible in an application. For a great example of what makes it a platform, you have to look no farther that what I’ve done. I’ve created an extension of Outlook, called an add-in or plug-in and turned it into the easiest Project Management tool. With our extension you can manage projects and organize what you need to have done. That is purely what defines a platform, the ability to change it and alter it and in our case, make it better than what it once was.

For the world at large, that is the beauty of what Microsoft has done, they’ve created a platform but they are selling it as an application. Microsoft Outlook has become quite ubiquitous in interaction with the online world for the vast majority of people. The interface has been replicated by software companies over and over, because it offers and try and true interaction that people are comfortable with.

Sometimes you’ve just got to tip your hat to the folks at Microsoft!