WPS 365 Becomes an AI Office Platform: What Matters and What Could Go Wrong

Originally published in Chinese on April 10, 2024. Kingsoft Office, the company behind China's WPS Office suite, has upgraded WPS 365 at its productivity conference. WPS 365 is its platform for organizations and enterprises. The upgrade includes a new WPS Office, the newly released WPS AI Enterprise Edition and WPS Collaboration. It covers the basic daily needs of an organization, from document creation to instant messaging (IM), meetings and email, and on to AI applications. It marks the formal step from a document-processing suite to an all-in-one AI office. Putting everything in one entry point Why combine the products in one module, or behind one entry point? I can think of a few reasons. If the products were scattered, they might not carry the brand strength that Office has, so users would need time to learn what each one is. A second reason is that many users in China like one product that solves everything, so combining them makes sense. Microsoft keeps its products as separate from one another as it can. That follows from different user groups and market conditions, and there is nothing wrong with it. How far WPS 365 has come How much room is there for WPS as a whole? From an enterprise point of view it may only be starting. They may have covered 10% to 20% of the way, and the problems ahead have a long path. The key factor is that if most users still treat it as a local product, the road is still long for them.