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November 2, 2007
• Vol.29 Issue 44
Page(s) 24 in print issue
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Migrating To A Web Office Suite
Is It Time For Your SME To Leave Microsoft Office For A Web Office Suite?
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Technology news has been abuzz lately with news of Web office applications launching from Google (www.google.com), Adobe (www.adobe.com), ThinkFree (www.thinkfree.com), and Zoho (www.zoho.com). Today’s Web office applications range from the lightweight Google Apps Professional Edition to fully featured Web office suites such as ThinkFree Premium and Zoho Business.
Jonathan Crow, director of marketing at ThinkFree, paints the current Web office suite market picture. “The adoption rate of Web office suites is opening up now as the huge giants are validating the space,” he says.
 Web Office Suites Today
Perhaps the best-known Web office suite is Google Apps Premier Edition, which combines Google Docs, Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Talk, Page Creator, and a customized Start Page based on iGoogle. Google Apps Premier Edition is a lightweight office suite when you compare it to Microsoft Office (www.microsoft.com) and other Web office suites. There is currently no offline mode for Google Apps Premier Edition.
Adobe recently acquired Virtual Ubiquity (www.virtub.com), makers of Buzzword, an online word processor based on Adobe’s Flex technology, adding more weight to its services portfolio. The acquisition is expected to be completed by the end of the year.
ThinkFree Premium, currently in private beta, takes a hybrid offline/online approach and includes ThinkFree Write 3, ThinkFree Calc 3, and ThinkFree Show. It also offers synchronization, which enables you to work on documents locally without having to be online, taking away perhaps the biggest objection to a Web office suite: “What happens if we lose our Internet connection?” ThinkFree Premium is leaving private beta this month, with ThinkFree planning a two-tiered services offering to the public, launching in Q1 of next year.
Zoho Business, also currently in private beta, is due to go live in the first quarter of next year. It brings together Zoho Writer, Sheet, Show, Wiki, Planner, and Notebook. This portal-like Web office also includes Chat, Mail, Calendar, and a Start Page. Zoho Business also includes an offline option.
Raju Vegesna, evangelist for Zoho, is careful to say that the Web office is still in the early stages and makes an analogy to the early days of the cell phone when they didn’t have the full capabilities of landline telephones of the time. Today’s cell phones and smartphones have features now exceeding landline phones.
Technical Considerations
One of the foremost technical considerations—the ability to round-trip office documents back and forth between Microsoft Office and the Web office suite—is crucially important, with ThinkFree and Zoho Business offering different approaches to this challenge. With the Zoho Microsoft Office plugin, Zoho Business users can save documents directly to Zoho Business from Microsoft Office and open documents directly from Zoho Business while working in Microsoft Office. ThinkFree Premium offers a Save Local feature, enabling users to save documents from ThinkFree applications to a local hard drive, as well as an upload feature to transfer documents back to the server.
Microsoft Office has become a front-end for back-end applications, and Web office suites aren’t yet mature enough to have APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) to tie into back-end systems.
Business Considerations
There are some business considerations you need to address when migrating your SME to a Web office suite. By virtue of legal, compliancy, and security issues your SME might be facing, a hosted Web office service may be out of the question. Therefore, if this is the case, you need to hone in on Web office solutions that you can host on premises.
Perhaps your SME is moving to or already uses a standard baseline for your PCs, augmented by giving your employees an allowance to purchase needed software for their business usage. Crow offers up a Web office suite as the corporate standard to everybody in the organization with the Microsoft Office power users and those who must use Microsoft Office able to purchase Microsoft Office with their business software allowances.
Drew Jones, information worker solutions manager for CDW (www.cdw.com), encourages SMEs to do a thorough analysis of their Office user communities’ requirements. He sees the new wave of Web office suites as “dumbed-down” applications without the rich feature set of Microsoft Office and with a server platform that’s insufficient for today’s knowledge worker.
Security Considerations
Document security is important in organizations, and the introduction of a Web office suite opens up some new security considerations for an SME. ThinkFree’s Crow cites the management tools within ThinkFree Premium that lock down documents on the server.
According to Vegesna, Zoho is taking a slightly different approach to security with its product plans, including SSL encryption between the server and the user with files encrypted on both the server and client side.
“How does it work with the rest of your security?” is the first security question you should ask when researching Web office suites, according to Jones. He cites the value of Microsoft’s centralized security model because it offers a core security platform for managing document security and user access vs. having to manage and control security across disparate security platforms.
Complementing Microsoft Office With A Web Office Suite
“Software as a service is all about Software plus Services—not either/or; it’s about ‘and.’ Some say that everything will be run out of the cloud (as a service) and that in the future we won’t have to deal with infrastructure management issues. We believe it will be a combination of local code (software) and cloud-based services,” according to a Microsoft spokesperson. Microsoft sees the Web as an extension of the Microsoft platform.
Microsoft Office, Web Office Suites & Your SME
The launch of ThinkFree Premium, Zoho Business, and even Google Apps Professional Edition does put some compelling office suite options on the table for SMEs. However, Microsoft Office is an underpinning of many workforce processes on and off the books, so a careful user analysis is necessary before migrating to a Web office or determining if a hybrid Microsoft Office/Web office solution will bring productivity and economic benefits to your SME. 
by Will Kelly
Reasons For Staying With Microsoft Office
If it isn’t broke, why fix it? Likewise, you shouldn’t fall into the trap that it’s just Microsoft Office (www.microsoft.com). Here are some reasons for sticking with Microsoft Office:
• Microsoft products are designed for consistency and interoperability.
• While the Web provides universal access, Microsoft Office on a PC runs regardless of connection speed and Internet connectivity.
• Document format wars aside, Microsoft Office dominates the office suite market, meaning you’ll be exchanging Office documents with customers and partners for the foreseeable future.
• Users are familiar with Microsoft Office, meaning the migration to a Web office suite is going to incur training, documentation, and support costs.
• The immaturity of today’s Web office suites means they may not support templates and macros your organization is currently using to streamline and automate work. |
Companies Ripe For A Web Office Suite
• SMEs seeking to extend secure office suite access to users who aren’t assigned a PC full time (for example, factory workers)
• Startup companies seeking a low-cost office suite alternative
• SMEs seeking to outsource their office suite maintenance and document security |
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