Web Office Week
This week Read/WriteWeb will be featuring a series of posts about the Web Office. Let's start by summarizing what exactly is a Web Office. In a June post we mentioned that a Web Office suite should have, at the least, the following apps in it: email, calendar, word processing, spreadsheets, presentations. These are the core products of Microsoft Office, the dominant office suite package. You could also make a case for apps like contacts manager, task manager or even project management to be in the core products, but we'll keep things real simple. Here's how the main Web Office contenders shape up:
Web Office Suite: Core Products
| Calendar | Word processing | Spreadsheets | Presentation | ||
| Google Apps | Y, Gmail | Y, Google Calendar | Y, Google D & S | Y, Google D & S | Y, Zenter + Tonic |
| Zoho | Y, Zoho Mail (private beta) | Y, Zoho Mail (private beta) | Y, Zoho Writer | Y, Zoho Sheet | Y, Zoho Show |
| ThinkFree | N | N | Y, ThinkFree Write | Y, ThinkFree Calc | Y, ThinkFree Show |
| Zimbra | Y | Y | Y | Y | N |
| Microsoft Office Live | Y | Y | N | N | N |
Note: Zimbra and Microsoft Office Live don't have separate names for their apps
It's certainly over-simplifying, but it helps to get a sense of where all the main players are in creating a basic Web Office suite. Google Apps has everything but Presentations, but that is rumored to be here soon after recent acquisitions in that space. Zoho has the most complete offering so far, including many other apps not listed (Meeting, Wiki, etc). Zimbra also has an impressive offering - like Google it is only missing Presentations. ThinkFree has the main productivity apps, but it doesn't have email or calendar.
A note about Microsoft. Currently it has a number of different offerings, all under the 'Office Live' banner - there are 7 products listed on this page, including Office Live Premium and Office Live Groove. But as yet, no sign that Microsoft will risk its massive desktop Office revenues, by offering an online office suite. Indeed, that may never happen - as Microsoft attempts to create a desktop/online hybrid around its 'services' strategy.
There are signs though that Microsoft is at least experimenting - earlier this month they announced a free, ad supported version of Microsoft Works, its 'lite' office suite. However it isn't a browser-based office offering, as was rumored last year.
Here's this week's poll:
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NeoOffice is the best Open Office alternative for OS X at this point. Sun is making their way into this platform with an Aqua version of OO but it's extremely buggy.
All this talk about web office is great but I still like the feedback from an application running on my machine. The collaboration features are great for the web office suite, but otherwise I'd take the desktop app.
Posted by: John | August 27, 2007 10:50 AM
Richard - Great idea for the series. Looking forward to the rest of it. I do question the inclusion of MS. I understand that they are a big player and should be in the online office space, but I don't think having just email+calendar even qualifies as office. If that's the case, then you could include Yahoo into the mix.
Posted by: Mike Qaissaunee | August 27, 2007 12:00 PM
Interesting post Mike and the poll results are about what I expected. Web-based office sounds compelling (to a vocal but distinct minority of the population as I wrote on blognation yesterday). One point that I feel needs to be made with full disclosure that I an adviser to ThinkFree. Of the web-based productivity providers, they're the only one with a full desktop client suite that runs on all platforms and, with the now-in-beta Premium Edition, maintains full sync across all of your PCs and the cloud.
I've been using it as my primary office suite for weeks and all my critical files are available on my Mac, my Tablet PC, and any computer I can borrow for a few minutes. Last week, I walked into the Business Center at the hotel I was staying at and printed a couple of documents I had edited earlier in my room on my way out to a dinner meeting and didn't need to bother with lugging my laptop or even messing with a USB key.
That's my idea of working anywhere, anytime.
Posted by: Marc Orchant | August 27, 2007 7:50 PM
Er... sorry Richard. Mike's name was on my screen and I had a brain cramp ;^)
Posted by: Marc Orchant | August 27, 2007 7:51 PM
There is another, fully Ajax service that could have been included in this review. Ajax Office has services like word processing, spreadsheets, presentation, sketch (compatible with Adobe Illustrator) and an Ajax mp3 player. Not all services are targeted at web office, but they sure are good.
BTW, I'm no spokesperson for Ajax Office. I wrote a blog post on their web office suite.
Posted by: Badsra | August 29, 2007 5:40 AM