Office Tools On The Web

ReadWriteWeb writes "What will be the primary elements of an Office Suite for the Web be? Who among the big or small companies is currently providing the best examples? ZDNet's Richard MacManus reviews the contenders for collaborative Web Office tools. Some of these products may well be acquisition targets this year for Microsoft and Google, as it is anticipated that both companies will release fully functional Web Office Suites sometime in the next few years."

Comments

Avalon Business Systems

[Johnso]

I've mentioned them before, but I'm still impressed by the Avalon Management Suite by Avalon Business Systems.

It's a web-based (AJAX?) management tool that my company uses to handle our scheduling, inventory, invoicing, CRM, etc. It's really slick, but useful (it reminds me a lot of GMail).

Really, web services like Avalon, GMail, and Flickr are coming along nicely. It's a lot nicer to be able to access your data and tools from anywhere than it would be to have to install software on a dozen computers.

Re:I'd say more like

[AKAImBatman]

* No, AJAX is *NOT* good enough. It's fine for email. It's not good enough for anything else.

AJAX/DHTML is good enough. It's the programmers that aren't. Most of these "Web Office" products are really nothing more than beautified HTML Editor components disguised as something we haven't seen before. The types of features that make a Word Processor a real Word Processor are missing because no one else has done the work for them. Not to mention the lack of spreadsheets, presentation software, and database interfaces.

I don't know when it's going to percolate through the industry that you have to actually do a lot of work to be a leader and make money. If you just slap stuff together off the shelf, your competitors will be able to follow. Then while you're all arguing, a REAL company will pay talented professionals to develop software that actually meets the needs of customers.

Anyone else remember WordPerfect for Java?

Yeah, I remember. I also remember that it was badly planned from the get-go. If Corel had been really trying, they wouldn't have released a suite as a set of Applets. ThinkFree came along a few years later and showed that it was quite doable to replicate MS Office in Java.

Cant wait

[spazoidspam]

I can't wait for Microsoft OR Google to release a good web based office client. The advantages of a web-based office solution are numerous, but the biggest that comes to mind is that non-savvy computer people dont have to worry about losing their files. Of course I back up all my documents, but my parents arent that smart. When their hard drive failed they lost it all, including all of their email (outlook). I decided to set them up on an exchange server with Outlook Web Access, which they constantly rave about. Next time they have to migrate to a computer, email is one less thing I have to worry about getting backed up (I use gmail of course, but they like sticking with their ISPs email address and dont like the normal webmail interface).

The disadvantages of a web-based office solution are obvious and aparent, but the fact is that they all start to dissapear as bandwidth goes up and the years march on. Right now a web-based office solution would not work too well due to processor/bandwidth concerns, but in 3-5 years i can see this as a real good solution.

Just imagine, you drop your laptop in hot lava while touring the volcanos in hawaii. Dont despair! All of your documents are safe and sound along with your email back on good ole googles servers. Even more likely is your mom gets a new computer, but instead of calling you and asking you to come over and copy all her old data on to her new computer, she already has access to all of it.