freenigma is a Firefox plug-in that offers e-mail
encryption to a whole range of Web email systems - including Gmail, Yahoo!Mail and
Hotmail/MSN. It is a product of Germany-based freiheit.com. freenigma came out of public
beta at the end of September and is now open to all - but you still have to enter your
name and email address to receive "an invitation" (which sounds quite 'beta' to me).
Interestingly, freenigma has also just announced a Professional Edition for corporate
customers as well as a Microsoft Outlook plug-in - both to be released by the end of the
year. So looks like they're expanding beyond just web email and into the enterprise
space.
It is a compelling product, as privacy and security are among the two biggest concerns related to using the Web as a platform. Although I am an avid user of Gmail, I wonder sometimes about sending private information across the ether on a web-based email service. I'm sure they're the usual slightly paranoid concerns of every single Web user, but a product like freenigma is positioned well to take advantage of those common concerns for privacy. See also my recent post on Web 2.0 security issues, from a report by Finjan.
Disclaimer: SocialText is a competitor of Atlassian, one of our sponsors.
This week I spoke to Ross Mayfield, CEO of wiki company SocialText, about "Enterprise 2.0". To put it very
crudely, Enterprise 2.0 means blogs and wikis in the enterprise. According to Ross and
others, Enterprise 2.0 is slightly different to the "Office 2.0" or Web Office meme also
doing the rounds. In our discussion Ross defined Enterprise 2.0 as "free form social
software adapted for enterprises". Rod Boothby says it means "Emergence
Software", while M.R. Rangaswami of Sand Hill Group wrote an in-depth article to try
and explain the concept.
I have to admit I'm less concerned with how the term is defined (or even what term we use), than where the market for web-based software is heading and what products are out there right now. So let's get to the nitty gritty...
To further Read/WriteWeb's
continuing look at the Web Office space, I spoke again recently with Joe Kraus - CEO of
JotSpot. What started out as a wiki company, is slowly
but surely morphing into a Web Office suite contender. Although JotSpot does not actually
position itself in that way - they're positioned as a kind of wiki/office hybrid, which
we discuss in detail in this post. Also JotSpot has just released 3 new features, which
are outlined below.
Back in July, JotSpot released its 2.0 version. It was described by Joe Kraus at that point as "wikis meets Microsoft Office". The upgrade enabled JotSpot users to collaborate on different types of "office-like" products. Its spreadsheet product, Tracker, was integrated into their core wiki product - along with calendars, File Cabinets, Photo Pages.
In the latest release of JotSpot, more apps have been added to their application gallery: group directory, forum and To Do Lists. Nothing revolutionary there, but it beefs up their Office Suite credentials a bit more. This screenshot from their Applications Gallery page shows the latest list of office (aka productivity) apps:
These are all "Page Types", which basically means different types of productivity applications presented as Wiki pages. The theory behind this, Joe told me, is that all the Page Types "have this wiki-esque properties - they're group editable, they're immediately collaborative, they have the same access control model on top of them."
Joe said to me that although JotSpot still positions itself as a wiki nowadays - they don't necessarily see themselves in that space in 5-10 years. But he said the metaphor of wikis still has appeal to people, as a representation of the Web's shift from a monolog to a dialog - aka the read/write web! JotSpot then is about "bringing the familiarity that people have with office [software] and bringing the Wiki metaphor to that." In essence, bringing the 'dialog' and collaboration features of wikis into the office environment.
Both Google and Zoho will be announcing new office product offerings at tomorrow's Office 2.0 conference. Steve Bryant from eWeek reports:
"Google will announce tomorrow at the Office 2.0 conference a new product called Google Docs, which will merge Writely and Google Spreadsheets into a collaboration and document management solution, according to sources."
Google Docs will be available at docs.google.com. Writely and Google Spreadsheets already offer export to blog and other formats - and have similar sharing functionality. So this seems like common sense to merge the two products together. But once again, it all seems a tad unimaginative and piecemeal from Google - as with Google Apps for Your Domain; which bundles together Gmail, Google Talk, Calendar and Page Creator. As always with Google, who knows what is around the corner. A full Web Office Suite must be in the works and it's probably just that all the pieces of the jigsaw aren't ready yet - they don't have online presentations and project management products yet.
Meanwhile a small company that does have all the pieces, Zoho, is going to push out a new version of Zoho Virtual Office. Techcrunch is reporting that it "will integrate most of the 10+ Zoho services already available and add several more like Webmail and calendaring." As of now, the product includes web-based collaboration groupware such as email, documents and calendar. So it appears it'll be upgraded to include the rest of the Zoho product range (spreadsheets, presentations, etc). If you want a quick tour of all these apps, check out my Image Gallery on ZDNet.
As I noted earlier this week, Zoho is planning a full Web Office Suite. But I'm a little confused by the branding here, as it's being called ZohoX as well. So is this a new brand, or an upgrade of the existing Zoho Virtual Office?
Zoho Projects, their online project management tool, also went out of Beta yesterday. There's no question then that Zoho has all the products required for a full web-based suite, so in that sense they are a step ahead of Google - and Microsoft. But the space is still fairly immature and so a lot of jostling for position is going on.
Related posts: Zoho Web Office Suite Image Gallery; Office 2.0 Podcast Jam Kicks Off; Zoho Moving Towards A Full Web Office Suite
Disclaimer: Zoho is a R/WW sponsor
UPDATE: Google Docs & Spreadsheets (another great name) is now live.
For those of us who can't make the Office 2.0 conference, there is an Office 2.0 Podcast Jam running all this week. I contributed a 5-minute podcast, which was chosen as the keynote to kick off the jam. My topic was: Why Web Office Software is a New Paradigm, Different from Desktop Office Software.
I'm not a natural podcaster (it took me quite a few takes just to get the podcast I ended up with!), but I hope I managed to cover off some of the important reasons why Web-based office software is different from the likes of Microsoft Office.
For a more enlightening and educational podcast, check out Anne Zelenka's interview with Rosemary Stasek of Women’s Campaign International. The topic, as Anne explained on her blog, is "the poor utility infrastructure in that part of the world, about how government offices do without bare necessities, and about how Rosemary is training Afghani women to speak up for themselves." Forget the gossip about Google buying Youtube (update: ok so turns out it was true!) or controversy over newspapers vs blogs, Rosemary's podcast is what it's all about and is a much needed reality check for us all.
In regards to my podcast, Anne came up with the following discussion points - feel free to discuss here or over at the Jam blog...
Zoho announced during the weekend the Zoho Single Sign-on
(SSO), which allows existing users to merge their different Zoho services accounts
into one. As of now the Zoho Single Sign-on currently covers the following 6 services:
Zoho Writer, Zoho Sheet, Zoho Show, Zoho Creator, Zoho Planner and Zoho Chat.
I asked AdventNet CEO Sridhar Vembu whether this news portends a full Web Office Suite (AdventNet is the company that runs Zoho). Their competitors Zimbra, ThinkFree, JotSpot and others seem to be moving towards an integrated suite of web-based office products. Sridhar said yes, that is their intention. He told me:
"We are moving towards a full WebOffice suite. We already have the Writer/Sheet/Show covered, and those are getting updated at a rapid clip. We also have Zoho Virtual Office, which offers full Sharepoint style collaboration features. We are working on integrating these services in a better way, and single sign-on is the first step towards that integration. Zoho Creator brings Access/VB like database & scripting to the mix."
Sridhar also said that Zoho Projects and Zoho CRM will be part of the Web Office Suite mix, as they "provide more breadth and depth to the product offering."
Zoho's intent then is, in Sridhar's words, "to offer a fairly comprehensive suite for businesses, as they move their data to the web."
Finally, Sridhar noted that they will offer a downloadable version of their Office Suite product "once the services mature." So it seems it won't just be web-based!
Disclosure: Zoho is a Read/WriteWeb sponsor
In the clearest sign yet that
the big guns are preparing to step up the battle for Web Office, Microsoft
has said it is considering releasing a version of Microsoft Works (the poor cousin of
Microsoft Office) as a web suite. The desktop version of Works retails for $50 and
includes a calendar, word processor, spreadsheets, Web Browser and e-mail. While its
currently positioned as a home productivity toolset (to do your accounts, write letters,
etc), it could pretty easily be re-positioned as a (small) business web office suite.
In any case - because Works includes basic word processing and spreadsheet software, to web-enable that and bundle it as a suite would be a step above what both Microsoft and Google currently offer. Right now Microsoft has Office Live (web hosting, email, project collaboration) and Google offers Apps For Your Domain (email, IM, calendar and website creator).
Microsoft's planned web-based Works would be a free package, supported by advertising. As Reuters put it:
"[Microsoft] faces a growing pack of Web-based competitors -- led by Google -- that is offering similar [office] technology for free with a business model that makes money off advertising.
The world's largest software maker is now mulling how it can move Microsoft Works, a basic suite of business software that often comes preloaded on inexpensive consumer PCs, onto the Web as part of its growing stable of free online services."
I think
this is a wise move by Microsoft to pre-empt Google's upcoming Web Office suite. It
clearly won't affect sales of their flagship MS Office, as the functionality is much
richer in the desktop version - even more so when Vista and Office 2007 are released.
Works is very basic by comparision - but it does have word processing and
spreadsheets.
On the other hand Google will probably easily trump a web-based Works, once they package up Writely and Google Spreadsheets into a proper suite. So far there have only been hints that Google will take that next step - perhaps they're still busy working on the business models for such a move.
All in all, things are starting to get interesting in the Web Office space. I wouldn't mind betting that Google pushes forward whatever secret plan they have for a full office suite, now that Microsoft has made noises about webifying word processing and spreadsheets.
See also: Google Office: a close-up look and image gallery of Google office apps.
Google's Carl Sjogreen gave a talk at the Future of Web Apps conference
about how they built Google Calendar. Rakesh Agrawal
took extensive notes, as did Tim
Bonnemann.
What I love about Google is they consistently think 'Web Native' when developing web applications. My favorite example of that is Gmail, which changed the whole paradigm of web email. And that's nothing against the new Yahoo Mail Beta, which has a desktop UI and is a very fine app too. But when you build a browser-based app, then why not optimize the design for the Web and introduce new UI paradigms that weren't possible in the desktop era? That may be the early adopter in me speaking, but the innovation you do now will be the norm in the long-term.
Carl Sjogreen said that the Google Calendar team focused "on what the web can do that paper can't" - e.g. collaboration and access anywhere.
On that note, on ZDNet today I wrote about what we can expect in a Web Office. In a nutshell, expect something completely different from Microsoft Office:
...it's important to remember that with new technology comes new functionality. A term I use for this is 'Web native', meaning that the next generation of office software will not necessarily be the same as the past PC-based generation (typified by Microsoft Office). The new generation will have Web native functionality - including, but not limited to, collaboration. Rod Boothby likes to say that blogs and wikis are the first major 'office 2.0' apps, but I think a web-based suite will be so much more than publishing and collaboration features.
One new feature that I think will be common place is 'mashups', whereby data is sourced and combined from a variety of internal and external sources. Imagine an online spreadsheet for a marketing report where you gather data from all over the Web and across internal business units too.
There will be other Web native functionality too, things that we can't yet predict.
I referenced Zimbra, DabbleDB, Morfik, Zoho and ThinkFree as some companies that are building Web Native office applications. If, as Nick Carr suggested recently, office suites will be fully web-based by the early 2010s - then I'm betting that Web Native functionality will underpin this evolution.
Original link via Greg Linden
In a ZDNet Image Gallery, I've gone through 7 products that may become part of a future Google Web Office. Right now, Google doesn't have a full web-based office suite on the market - but this year they've gradually been compiling Web Office parts. For example if you click on "all my services" in the top left corner of your Gmail, you'll go to your Google account and see a list of products that Google offers. Many of them are Web Office parts, or could easily become a part of a Web Office. Here is the current list:
Google Spreadsheet
So there are 9 current Google services listed - the 6 I've highlighted are Office candidates. You can add word processing app Writely to that, which makes 7 possible Web Office suite parts. Some of the pre-beta products from the Google Labs page are possible additions in the future, as well as Labs "graduates" like Google Desktop. But let's not worry too much about what's missing (presentations and project management aren't even Google products yet).
Writely
Indeed there's a lot of work to be done to integrate the 7 office-like products listed above. While recently Google released the oddly named Google Apps for Your Domain - which bundles together Gmail, Google Talk, Calendar and Page Creator - it's just the start of what could be done to integrate products into an office suite.
Even so it's worth looking at the current product mix, for clues to a future Google Office. In the Image Gallery I've compiled, I've focused on the 7 office-like products listed above. I've highlighted a few promising Web Office features from most of the products, even if there's work to be done by Google yet.
Over the next couple of months on Read/WriteWeb, I'll be profiling the main Web Office suite candidates - such as Zoho, ThinkFree, gOffice, Zimbra, JotSpot, Goowy and Morfik. Plus of course Microsoft's Office Live and Google's current jigsaw puzzle of Web Office apps. Today I'm starting with Zimbra.
Zimbra is an open source Web Office vendor. It started
off in 2005 as an email/calendar collaboration toolset, big on mashup functionality and
Web 2.0 hype. Zimbra has since added word processor and spreadsheet to its product range,
meaning it now closely resembles a Web Office suite.
Zimbra Collaboration Suite (ZCS) 4.0 was launched last month, featuring Zimbra Documents - a WYSIWYG tool for creating, sharing, and publishing word and spreadsheet documents online. Other features in ZCS 4.0 include synch to mobile devices, VoIP integration, user access controls. The ZCS 4.0 Open Source Edition of Zimbra is free, and the commercially-supported Network Edition is $28/mailbox/year.
The product is made up of a browser-based Ajax client and a "collaboration server". Alternatively you can just use the Zimbra server and pair it with another email client such as Outlook or Thunderbird.
You can do a hosted demo on their website, to get the feel of the product. If you decide to go ahead with it, Zimbra is available as an open source download or a hosted edition (both are browser-based).
The email part of Zimbra uses the same kind of interface as Outlook, but its functionality is more along the lines of Gmail. For example it has a 'conversation' view that organizes emails by conversation topic rather than a folder view.
Zimbra uses AJAX extensively, to make their
web email app look and feel like a desktop one. For example it uses mouseovers to show
metadata for items and words. This seems like a nice value-add, but it would mean
changing my own usage habits with email. - because generally I don't think of it as a
browsing experience. But this is a plus in my book, because it shows Zimbra is
challenging the old Outlook-based email paradigm (which most other web email systems,
with the exception of Gmail, still follow). Drag and drop is another AJAX touch - users
can move their email messages from folder to folder this way.
Drag and Drop
The real power of Zimbra is its APIs, which together with Zimbra's open source status makes this a potentially powerful development platform. The APIs enable developers to access messaging functions inside the Zimbra application, meaning external apps can hook into Zimbra's functionality. The example used in the demo is a travel application using Zimbra's APIs to "automatically create a calendar event for the person traveling". In addition to the inward API hooks, Zimbra also has interfaces for making outbound web service requests. Here's the example used in the demo:
"…the Zimbra application could recognize a shipment tracking number such as 792806493888 [a Fedex Tracking Number] in a message, make a web service call to the shipping vendor based on that number, and then provide more details about the shipment to the recipient of the message based on information obtained from the web service call."
You can even set it up to interact with another web service, from within the Zimbra system.
Zimbra Mashup
Another example is clicking on a link within an email and up pops a Yahoo! Map, or a link when clicked opens a Skype call. Plus Zimbra has mini web apps embedded within its system, called "Zimlets" - for example an Amazon search box. The buzz phrase for all this is "enterprise mashups" and it's the kind of functionality that got the attendees of the last Web 2.0 Conference very excited back in October.
Zimbra Maps mashup
The APIs and web services possibilities that Zimbra offers seem like a potentially thriving platform. So I guess the question is: are they being used?
The addition of documents and spreadsheets to Zimbra's arsenal made them a worthy contender among the small 'Web Office' startups. Another exciting aspect of Zimbra Documents is that it uses ALE (AJAX Linking and Embedding), which provides the ability to embed rich content into an editable document that users can share, publish, and edit - within a Web browser.
There have been question marks about the performance of Zimbra in the browser, in particular that the UI could be very slow. In May I asked CEO Satish Dharmaraj about this. He acknowledged there have been issues with IE browsers, in particular IE6. But Satish said that Zimbra performs significantly better in Firefox and a lot of its UI problems in IE6 were due to Zimbra "pushing the envelope of Ajax". Apparently IE7 will address these issues, so Satish was confident (when I last spoke to him) that Zimbra will not run into such problems in the new Microsoft browser.
Zimbra is packed full of features, such as the mashups and things like "Search Builder" and an RSS reader. It's an all-round impressive product. I'm not sure how much it's being used by external partners as a mashup platform though. But when I spoke to Satish, he told me they have enterprise clients that are happily using Zimbra to completely manage their communications online and collaborate. Zimbra is a small (20 people), well funded startup ($31 million) - so it's still young and growing. One to watch in the Enterprise space.
Note: this post is adapted from my previous reviews of Zimbra, and interview, on ZDNet.
