Full RSS Feed
Receive
the Free CMSWire Newsletter
One of the big stories this year in the document and document management software space is going to be office suites in the cloud. This week alone there have been at least three developments in this area, from Microsoft, IBM and Google. In the document collaboration space, Workshare document comparison software now integrates with Open Text’s eDocs.
Office Web Apps Reach Extended?
If you thought Office Web Apps has been available to everyone since it was launched last year, then you’d be right, because it was.
That didn’t stop Microsoft (news, site) from announcing during the week that it had extended the reach of Web Apps to another 150 countries so users in those countries could use Web Apps too.To quote from the Web Apps blog:
Starting today, people in over 150 more countries can use the Web Apps to view, edit, and share Office documents from anywhere with a browser and an internet connection. This includes viewing, editing, and sharing Office document attachments in Hotmail. The 150 new locations include India, Indonesia, Israel, Malaysia, Mexico, Philippines, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Africa, and Thailand.
Next month is the global finale – when the Web Apps will reach the entire world, with a roll-out to all remaining markets in Central and South America, including Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Puerto Rico, and Venezuela.”
Only thing about this is that the functionality has been available to anyone all this time and all you had to do was find it. And no, that’s not difficult, either. Could it be that all we are really seeing is the beginning of the massive marketing campaign that will precede the launch of Office 365? After all Web Apps offers some of the collaboration features of the promised Office 365 – gets people “in the mood," as it were.
IBM Puts Symphony in the Cloud
IBM (news, site)also joined the charge to corner the market for Web office productivity suites this week with the launch of LotusLive Symphony for the cloud, an office suite that offers a social platform enabling simultaneous collaboration on documents in the cloud.
IBM believes LotusLive integration will make the difference. LotusLive is IBM’s portal, offering a number of collaboration and social networking services in the cloud.
With Symphony, IBM says it aims to break the link between Microsoft Office desktops and business by offering features that will enable organizations to socially enable their business processes.
Although Big Blue thinks Symphony will be enough, how this will pan out still isn’t clear, particularly because Microsoft will be launching Office 365. IBM says it will be launching Symphony in the second half of 2011, raising the prospect of a LotusLive and Office 365 rumble in the web office space later on in the year.
Continue reading this article:
Email It
