17 Web Based Competitors to MS Office

prostoalex writes "Red Herring magazine takes a look at 17 projects in the Web 2.0 space competing with Microsoft Office for the attention of the office workers worldwide. The table lists Thinkfree, Zoho Writer, Writeboard, Google Writely, Rallypoint and JotSpot Live as Microsoft Word competitors, JotSpot Tracker, Numsum, iRows, Zoho Street as Microsoft Excel alternatives, S5, Zoho Show as PowerPoint contenders, ThinkFree, gOffice and Zoho Virtual Office as suite offerings. Even Microsoft Project has its fair share of Web 2.0 competitors: Basecamp and JotSpot Project Manager made the list."

Comments

SSH tunnel + VNC + OO.org

[irtza]

that is my online word processor of choice. I keep all necessary apps on an SD card with a portable reader. My documents are secured. My home server is backed up to resources under my control. plus I can use it from any one of the computers at my place. Its like a mobile desktop.

Re:SSH tunnel + VNC + OO.org

[FST777]

Indeed. Furthermore, all-webbased apps can be the future for enterprise computing. Have a couple of servers hosted under your own control and get some cheap thin-clients to work on them (with FF, offcourse :) )

That way it can be much easier to access all resources from all over the world. Managers love that. Web-desktop can just be the Next Big Thing (TM) because it is available ANYWHERE with net-access.

And you should know users. As soon as their company uses this tech, they will use it from home too. That is exactly why these projects ARE in fact great: they show that it is possible. Sure, you'll miss features now. But with good PHP/JavaScript/CSS/XHTML/XML-coding, nearly anything can be done. The problem is that there is no complete codebase now. That will involve some work, but it will be done, simply because the SB/MB's want it as soon as they remotely see the possibilities.

The keys are access, and integration: have a webbased CRM/ERP-package, link that to your webbased Office-suite and link that all to your CMS / Webshop ét voila: the managers AND the customers are happy. In time, even the IT-departement will be.

Web 2.0 office apps

[DragonWriter]

Are they really competing with Microsoft Office that much? I'm not sure they really are: while there is some overlap (especially with where Office is headed), they seem to be somewhat different target universes of usess.

Workflow

[TrippTDF]

I think there are some really intresting places you can go with workflow with an online suite. Suddenly you don't have people emailing links to documents on a file server or changing a file name to denote a new version... yes, they are managers that will do that work for you, but these systems can make that flow effortless.

I've seen serveral groups of people already setup a basecamp and a writely account in order to colaberate on personal or non-work related projects, and it's starting to work. It's a new way of thinking that will take some time to bring to the light of day, but should make for an intresting "upgrade" to the current ways in which people work.

Re:Workflow

[Anonymous Coward]

I think that the best solution is something along the lines of use whatever you want to create your documents but manage your workflow better. I've used http://centraldesktop.com/ before and it is great in this respect. It doesn't try to change the tools you use to create your work, just helps you manage and share it better with co-workers.

Re:Duh.

[Architect_sasyr]

Heh, and if I didn't want to do it on the internet, how stupid would I feel.
 
Laptop or Internet... Speed or Lag... Backups under my control, or trust a third party... Hmmm...

Re:What's the point?

[Anonymous Coward]

To be fair, one useful point is to have collaborative editing, with built-in version control and the like. If you've ever had to do a group writeup for a project or tried to organize some kind of gathering, you'll appreciate the value of this. However the majority of these tools seem to be just cool tech demos to draw some investor money.

I know that folks here are going to dis this stuff

[bgfay]

but the fact of the matter is that if I had a truly portable, cross-platform office program even with limited functionality, it would make my life easier. I'm using Writely now and so far like it. I want to be able to write (that's what I do) and not have to worry too much about installs and upgrades and the like. The fact that writely saves in ODF format is great.

Put it this way: I've been thinking about getting a MacBook but haven't wanted to run NeoOffice on it while running OpenOffice everywhere else. Beyond that, OpenOffice is a beast that can do most anything even when 95% of what I do is type plain text with minor formatting. Having the option of Writely that works in Firefox which, in turn, works on everything, is a bonus for me and opens up all sorts of options.

All that said, I know that there will be times when the network will be down. I'll have other options. But as the network reliability has increased I worry less and less about this sort of thing.

Say what you want about this or that other solution or about the redundancy of this, but couple it with Gmail and it's something on the order of a killer-app.

Check out MICROSOFT's wrongdoing

[applix7]

I kind of feel like Microsoft is either dead, or its limbs are dying while its head remains talking. Meanwhile the little companies are nibbling at the carcass of what used to be its market share. But I could be wrong about that. After all, I am using Windows now. But then again, I am using little of Windows except the core OS: I use Firefox, Thunderbird, and Vim. The parts of Windows that I use could be handled by many other OSes.

Anyway, check out what MS has been up to (the short list) http://home.comcast.net/~plutarch/malfy.html

EditGrid Online Spreadsheet

[Mean Variance]

I've become hooked on EditGrid for an online spreadsheet. I see them trying to compete with, and building a better product than, Google as much as MS. For many reasons, I had been looking for a good online spreadsheet and when I heard about Google, I was eager to give it a try. When the news was posted on Slashdot, someone made a reference to EditGrid.

I sampled both and have committed many useful spreadsheets to my EditGrid account. They are constantly updating features and have yet to screw it up in the process from what I've seen.

In many ways, I find the online features more useful than Excel:

• Constant backups and rollback including labeling versions
• Real-time multi person collaboration (yes, I really have used that feature)
• Easy backup and download of entire spreadsheet portfolio in Excel format
• Good API that they're constantly updating

On the other hand, you couldn't pry my copy of Office 2000 (in particular Excel) from my cold dead hands. It's a very powerful, fast, and well established tool, period.

Basecamp + Writeboards = Great Document Collab.

[viper21]

We've used Basecamp for the last year successfully for our business, which is great for working with our remote clients. We have had the opportunity to heavily use Writeboards within our Basecamp account for the last few months with our clients.

The great thing about being web based is that we all see the same thing, and the document history of Writeboards is great to flip back through time to see the changes we have made.

Now I don't see this as a replacement to Word for daily business use, but for document collaboration it is truly a great tool.

Good job guys.

Re:Duh.

[muszek]

Taking all your crap wherever I go, how tired would I be. Forgetting or having no time...

I use gmail for mail, moin moin (not exactly web 2.0 and not hosted by someone else, but who cares) for all our documentation, writely for documents I share with people outside of my project. I don't want to take care of spam, synchronize ~/.evolution whenever I switch computers, configure mail server (and any other service that's not necessary... hell, I even use afraid.org so that I don't have to mess with bind. Web based solutions are great if all you care is ease of use, convenience and saving time.

Haven't tried any spreadsheets yet, but whenever (not often) I have to edit something that we've done in Excell (long time ago), OOo v.1.x (some time ago, b4 Ubuntu Breezy was out, I think) and OOo v.2.x, it's a real pain in the ass (converting to ods, taking care of permission, so that others can overwrite files, etc.). Having some hosted, based on ODF spreadsheet solution would be sweet.