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Cisco: Google Wave Completes Us | Michael Hickens
Über technologist Michael Hickens writes about the recent Cisco announcement that they intend on competing with Google, Zoho and MOSS in the cloud collaboration space. I left a lengthy comment on this page, trying to come to grips with the meaning of this challenge. I titled my comment, "Cisco Office? Maybe they should consider Feng Office-in-the-Cloud". Good luck Conrado. Go get them.
Interestingly, Jason Harrop and i met Ms. Alex Hadden-Boyd, director of marketing for the collaboration software group at Cisco. She was kind enough to refer me directly to David Knight, the technology director of Cisco's WebEX Conferencing initiative. Alex is quoted in a CNet article at:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1001_3-10276549-92.html
Cisco is striving to redefine itself as a vendor connecting inner and outer clouds, thus reasserting its relevance in the context of a fluid Web-driven IT world increasingly dominated by the likes of Google, Salesforce, Oracle and IBM. It also hopes to parlay its legacy of infrastructure expertise into a reassuring presence, particularly for veteran IT administrators struggling to balance their in-house infrastructures against the cost-savings and potential efficiencies of cloud computing.
OpenGoo: Office Productivity in the Cloud « Ahlera | Words from Ahlera
Another great review for Conrado.
Summary: OpenGoo is an open source web/Cloud office where all resources and aspects of contact and project management are linked. This includes eMail, calendar, task, schedules, time lines, notes, documents, workgroups and data. Great stuff. OpenGoo and hosted sister Feng Office are the first Web Office systems to challenge the entire Microsoft Office productivity environment. Very polished, great performance. Excellent use of URI's to replace Win32-OLE functionality. Lacks direct collaboration of Zoho and gDOCS. Could easily make up for that and more with the incorporation of Wave computing (Google).
I'm wondering when Conrado will take on the vertical market categories; like Real Estate - Finance? I also think OpenGoo and Feng Office have reached the point where governments would be interested. Instead of replacing existing MSOffice desktops, migrate the project/contact management stuff to OpenGoo, and shut down the upgrade treadmill. Get into the Cloud. I suspect also that Conrado is looking carefully at Wave Computing, and the chellenge of incorporating Wave into OpenGoo.
Feng Office: Putting the “Flow” in Workflow
Conrado gets a very good review!
Excerpt: Feng Office packs most of the features you should require for most project management duties. In addition to basics like calendars, contacts and email, it also provides milestone and task management, and a built-in time-tracking function.
All of the above are well-implemented, although some users may actually find the similar interface design of all the functions more confusing than helpful, since it’s often not clear which function you’re using at any given time without looking at what tab is highlighted. I like the uniformity, though, since it gives each feature a sense of connectedness to the others and adds to the feeling that Feng Office is a holistic solution.
Notes, Links and Documents features also bring much to Feng Office’s overall value proposition, and each is well-executed. You can even create new Word docs and PowerPoint HTML documents and presentations directly from within Feng Office using its own built-in editors, both of which retain UI elements from Microsoft’s own suite. That means less time switching from browser to standalone apps, which adds up to better productivity.
Zoho Office For Microsoft SharePoint, Online Collaboration, Online Word Processor, Online Spreadsheet, Online Presentation
Collaborate and Edit documents with Zoho, Store and Manage
in Microsoft® SharePoint®.
Zoho is onto something here. The video is well worth the watching.
Anthony Ha of Venture Beat ahd this to say:
"As online office software tries to move into big corporations, it’s starting to work more closely with entrenched solutions — which often means technology built by Microsoft. In the latest example, Zoho just announced plans to offer its collaboration services as an add-on for SharePoint, Microsoft’s server and software for collaboration and document management."
"Basically, that means you can use Zoho Office as the interface for collaborative editing of documents, while the documents themselves sit safely on the SharePoint server, behind the corporate firewall. The add-on brings a more web-like interface to SharePoint; rather than having to check documents in and out as they work on them, multiple users can jump into a document and edit it at once, and also send instant messages back-and-forth within their application using Zoho Chat."
"This is a smart way to get Zoho into companies that wouldn’t consider making the full jump into online office applications, but want to experiment with these kinds of tools without sacrificing security or throwing away existing hardware. The financial investment is small, too — a 30-day trial period, followed by $2 per user per month if companies pay for a year, or $3 per user per month if companies pay by month."
Making Word multiuser: Plutext | Webware : Cool Web apps for everyone - CNET
Fighting this killer feature is Microsoft Word's own killer feature, which is: Everyone in business has Word, and most people know how to use it effectively. There are plenty of people who would use a simultaneous editing feature in Word if it had one, and who aren't going to switch to Google just because it does.
A new service, Plutext, currently being developed, will bring nearly live editing to Word documents. I saw a demo at the Office 2.0 conference.
The Office question 2007 | Rough Type: Nicholas Carr's Blog:
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Add Sticky Note
As I argued in my post Office Generations last year, we're in the early stages of the "hybrid phase" of personal productivity applications, when most people will use web apps to extend rather than replace their old Office apps. This phase will play out over a number of years as the web technologies mature, at which point it will become natural to use purely web-based apps (with, probably, continued local caching of data and program code).
What this means is that Microsoft has a good opportunity to maintain Office's dominance during the switchover by pursuing what it calls its "software plus services" strategy. But Microsoft should be anything but complacent right now. Maintaining market dominance does not necessarily mean maintaining traditional levels of profitability. The biggest threat posed by online alternatives may well be to undermine Microsoft's pricing power - a trend we're already seeing in the student market.
- It's all about interoperability and functionality without disruption to existing business processes. - on 2007-12-18
Office generations 1.0 - 4.0| Hasta La Bye Bye Office 2.0 | Rough Type: Nicholas Carr's Blog:
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In this 2006 article Nick Carr lays out the history of office productivity applications, arguing the Office 2.0 is really Office 3.0 - the generation where desktop productivity office suites mesh with the Web.
This article is linked to The Office question,
- garyedwards on 2007-12-18
December 18, 2007
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Add Sticky NoteThe key is to extend both functionality and interoperability without taking away any of the capabilities that users currently rely on or expect. Reducing interoperability or functionality is a non-starter, for the end user as well as the IT departments that want to avoid annoying the end user. You screw with PowerPoint at your own risk.
Exactly! This is also the reason why ODF failed in Massachusetts! Reducing the interoperability or functionality of of any workgroup related business process is unacceptable. Which is why IBM's rip out and replace MSOffice approach as the means of transitioning to ODF is doomed.
The Office 2.0 (er 3.0) crowd is at a similar disadvantage. They offer web based productivity services that leverage the incredible value of web collaboration. The problem is that these collaboration services are not interoperable with MSOffice. This disconnection greatly reduces and totally neutralizes the collaboration value promise.
Microsoft of course will be able to deliver that same web based collaborative comp[uting value in an integrated package. They and they alone are able to integrate web collaboration services into existing MSOffice workgroups.
In many ways this should be an anti trust issue. If governments allow Microsoft to control the interop channels into MSOffice, then Microsoft web collaboration systems will be the only choice for 550 million MSOffice workgroup users. The interop layer is today an impossible barrier for Office 2.0, Web 2.0, SaaS and SOA competitors.
This is the reasoning behind our da Vinci CDF+ plug-in for MSOffice. Rather than continue banging the wall of IBM's transition to ODF through government legislated rip out and replace mandates, we think the way forward is to exploit the MSOffice plug-in architecture, using it to neutralize and re purpose existing MSOffice workgroups.
The key is getting MSOffice documents into a web ready format that is useful to non Microsoft web platform (cloud) alternatives. This requires a non disruptive transition. The workgroups will not tolerate any loss of interop or functionality. We believe this can be done using CDF+ (XHTML 2.0 + CSS).
Think of it as cutting off the transition of existing workgroup business processes to MS-OOXML at the head point; MSOffice. In the MS Stack, these business processes are heading for the Exchange/SharePoint Hub, where they then connect deep into the Microsoft cloud. We propose to use the da Vinci plug-in to re purpose MSOffice to connect to a FOSS cloud. Perhaps a Zimbra - Alfresco hub instead of Exchange/SharePoint.
The parrallel side of this equation is that we can also rather easily convert ODF docuemnts to that same CDF+ profile, joining the world of Linux Desktops into this higher, web platform level.
- on 2007-12-18
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Add Sticky NoteMicrosoft sees this coming, and one of its biggest challenges in the years ahead will be figuring out how to replace the revenues and profits that get sucked out of the Office market.
- Bingo! - on 2007-12-18
- 2 more annotations...
Adobe's Latest Acquisition Creates Buzz Around Office Docs - Flock
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For a Web 2.0 application, Buzzword is very slick. It's more sophisticated and feature rich than Glide Writer, which is also written on Adobe Flex. Glide however offers an incredible array of portable office 2.0 features. It's the whole enchilada. And, Glide runs on iPhone!
Another interesting plus for Glide is that Google uses Glide Presentations for their on line PowerPoint alternative. Which is to say, Google is likely to purchase Glide while Adobe tries to build on Buzzword.
One of the disturbing things for me is that Buzzword uses a proprietary file format! In the future they will provide conversion to ODF, but that will probably be based on the OpenOffice conversion engine. Which everyone in the Web 2.0, Office 2.0, enterprise 2.0 space uses. Including Google.
The thing is, the OpenOffice conversion engine lacks the conversion fidelity to crack into existing MSOffice bound business processes.
Because they can't crack into these existing MSOffice bound business processes, the entire Office 2.0 sector is at risk. All it takes is a competing entry from Microsoft, and the entire sector will ge twiped out by the superior interoperability - integration advantage to the MSOffice - Outlook desktop that Microsoft owns and carefully guards.
Oh wait. That just happened today with the announcement of MSOffice Live! Suspiciously timed to take the oxygen out of Adobe's announcement too.
~ge~
- garyedwards on 2007-10-01
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Adobe's foray into online productivity is unlikely to keep Microsoft's Steve Ballmer awake at night. But document sharing and collaboration features are central to Google's web-based office suite.
Office 2.0 Conference: Live Broadcast by Veodia
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Here you go! A complete video library of all the Office 2.0 conference presentations and pane discussions. For sure check out the panel on file formats with Florian Reuter, Bill Welty, Jason Harrop, Arnaud de Hors, Tom Snyder, and moi. Excellent discussion!
The trick to scrolling is to catch the horizontal scroll bar at the bottom of the page. Scroll to the right, and the video library vertical scroll bar will appear so you can see all the vids.
Document Formats - garyedwards on 2007-09-12
Office 2.0: Bringing Enterprise 2.0 to Morgan Stanley
- Excellent session with Adam Carson fron Morgan Stanley in New York, who has been preaching the Web 2.0 gospel for some time. Adam provides an excellent outline of the issues Web 2.0 - Office 2.0 providers will face when bringig their services into the enterprise. This is really great stuff! A nice break from the Office 2.0 echo chamber too! - garyedwards on 2007-09-10
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