Zoho Moving Towards A Full Web Office Suite
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
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This is good news; there is a real need for a web based complete, well-integrated office suite.
I hope so.. I was thinking just the same. It would be great if these web office suites can offer light desktop clients also. This would make the switch easier and more smooth. And as a web-based apps advocate, I admit I may sometimes miss the flexibilities of desktop apps.
Yes, I agree with Emre, that even though web-based apps are the way to go, it'd sure be nice to have a way to run them disconnected on the desktop.
With regard to Zoho, I am most excited about the Creator element. I am looking forward to the day when nondevelopers can create their own business apps.
Richard, I used your podcast for the podcast jam "keynote" because I liked the idea of Office 2.0 as a paradigm shift so much... if anyone wants to listen to Richard speak on Office 2.0, check my website for a link to the Office 2.0 Podcast Jam.
There are other web based office, like FlySuite that can work offline.
FlySuite is good for me, you and I like Java applets but many people can't even run them. Because WindowsXP does not support it by default. Java lost the war long before.
And this is not the only Java applet based office suite solution I've seen; there was an Asian company doing the same, even better.
Thanks Anne!
Emre, ThinkFree is perhaps the other java solution you're thinking of? It's pretty good too.
In fact I have tried a native Windows version of the FlySuite word processor that is much faster than the Java version, and it also works both online and offline without Java. I'm waiting for the spreadsheet.