David Lee told us that although they are not the full solution to Web Office, in terms of offering a suite of products, they think that EditGrid is a better standalone spreadsheet product than its competition. However we think partnerships and integration into other products is going to be key to their success.

We were particularly impressed by the toolbox and charts (see the screenshot below). The document-sharing, live chats, etc., are also very impressive. There are really too many features to list here, but check out the full product tour if interested. Also EditGrid's development team maintains a very informative changelog and future plan. 

EditGrid intergrated into other products

With its agile architecture that facilitates integration and embedding into enterprise application platforms, strong data manipulation and distribution capabilities and high usability, EditGrid is ideal for integrating into existing platforms. Right now EditGrid is integrated into start pages Netvibes, Pageflakes and Google Personalized Homepage. It is also integrated into Salesforce AppExchange and several SaaS products and platforms. [Ed: there is also going to be announcement early next week of another Web Office vendor using EditGrid - stay tuned to R/WW for that news]

Some other facts and figures... With its EditGrid Localization Project, EditGrid has been translated into 9 languages by its users. It has 15,000+ registered personal users from 30+ countries, 200+ trial organizations and 4,500+ trial organization users have created +23,000 spreadsheets.

David Lee told us that personal users can still enjoy free service, but they have a new subscription service that allows organizations to utilize EditGrid - which has added security, administration and customization features. It is $5 per user per month, and academic and non-profit organizations get a 50% discount.

Conclusion

It's great to see innovative Web Office technology coming out of Asia and taking on the big guns in the US. EditGrid is indeed an excellent standalone product, in many respects better than Google Spreadsheets. If it successfully partners with existing platforms (e.g. start pages and Salesforce), then it stands a good chance of competing with the Office Suite offerings of Google, Zoho, ThinkFree et al. In a sense, EditGrid takes the 'best-of-breed' theory of Web apps even further - by creating a specialist Web Office app that is best in class, but also requires partnerships with other vendors to be truly successful.

click image to view full-size screenshot