Nov 25th, 2008 |
Now that Microsoft has officially launched SaaS versions of Exchange and Office, they’ve begun making plans to deliver the next version of Office via SaaS as well. Microsoft’s move into the SaaS space is in some ways reactionary, as they look to fend off challenges from Zoho and Google, but it is also going to create concerns for the hundreds of companies that offer their own suites of hosted Microsoft apps.
As a recent convert to OpenOffice I’m still not sure the SaaS market for office apps is going to replace thick versions of document, presentation, and spreadsheet applications, but I do look forward to the continued ability of SaaS-based office productivity suites to enable easier document collaboration.
I am fast becoming a convert to hosted productivity suites, esp. Google Docs. Once you get over the initial minor quality problems when compared to thick desktop apps, and get used to the advantages (no worries about backing up data, access from any PC, clean desktop), you get addicted. Especially for spreadsheets, with the cool form feature. Of the major ones, presentation s/w has the farthest to go.
With long-haul high-bandwidth on its way, this is the future. Esp. with Ajaxified mobile devices becoming better.
My hoped-for vision: everything on the Web, something like Gears to provide some connection robustness with local hedging, version control like features sync’ing local and cloud copies of documents seamlessly, and collaboration via models like we already use for multi-person code version control (Subversion).
I’d still like local archival backups in case of earthquakes at multiple datacenters or terrorists taking over the Internet, but that should be easy: sign up for a freeze-frame snapshot of all your dynamic documents as monthly mailings of all your documents on DVD.
Security is the biggie. That’s the one thing I am still not completely sure of, and I avoid storing truly sensitive documents (like a scan of a birth certificate say) online.
Venkat