Seemingly out of the blue, Microsoft last week unveiled its Office for iPad productivity suite. While clearly a leader in terms of capabilities and functions among its peers, it is yet another salvo in Microsoft’s battle to move the universe to its Office 365 cloud computing solution.

To be clear, Office for iPad includes only Word, Excel, Powerpoint and OneNote. Of course, Word and Excel are the two most popular girls in this high school. (Microsoft had previously released Outlook clients for the iPad.)

As far as the iPad versions of Word and Excel go, Microsoft has largely got it right. Let’s face it, the primary users of Word and Excel on an iPad are going to be those folks who use those applications on a PC or Mac. The features that remain are the most used, and the features that were taken away are not as popular.

Combine your iPad with an external keyboard, such as a Rapoo E6300, and you’re instantly functional. You’re not going to compose your company’s quarterly report to shareholders or your departmental budget on an iPad, but you could certainly edit either of those documents fairly handily.

While the apps are purportedly free, the no-cost versions prevent actual editing of documents. There’s the rub. If you want to be able to edit documents, you need an Office 365 subscription.

If you don’t have an Office 365 subscription and choose to use the free version, you are reminded several times that you can buy one. Furthermore, you are also enticed with a 30-day trial subscription. Microsoft’s thinking must be that if you don’t get hooked in 30 days, you won’t get hooked at all.

Microsoft is on an all-out blitz to convert folks to Office 365. The kicker is that Microsoft includes licenses for desktop/tablet versions of Office with a 365 license. The business version of Office 365 provides licenses for up to five devices, while the personal version, which goes for $69, provides a single license. Business plans are bundled differently at different prices, but you can get small-business plans for as low as $12.50 per user per month, with the five desktop licenses.

We’ve seen this game plan before with Microsoft: Provide products at exceptionally affordable costs, and then corner the market. Clearly, Microsoft believes that the cloud computing market is one it wants to control.

Could Office for iPad fall short of the mark? Apple’s iWork is a pretty nifty suite that has been out for some time now and is also free. Google also has an offering that is not quite as robust, but it is a name brand and can only get better.

The fact of the matter, though, is that Microsoft controls the office productivity software market. While iWork provides compatibility with Office file formats, it’s not quite seamless. As such, it is fully expected that Microsoft will be the app of choice … unless a drastic change takes place.

John Agsalud is an IT expert with more than 25 years of information technology experience in Hawaii and around the world. He can be reached at johnagsalud@yahoo.com.