Web Office Suites Blurring Lines With Collaborative TechnologiesWeb Office Suites Blurring Lines With Collaborative Technologies

Ever since writing about Google Docs and Spreadsheets, I have been fascinated by the prospect of a completely web-based office suite. Since then I have been using Google Docs and Spreadsheets whenever possible. This past week I experimented with the Zoho suite of tools. They look to be several steps ahead of Google in terms of features and level of maturity. This only fueled my interest in these emerging services.

Web office suites blur the lines between what is a personal productivity and a collaborative application. This can challenge our traditional segmentation of technologies like collaboration, personal productivity tools, knowledge management, and others. For web office suites these can simply represent features, just as the information worker simply sees these as basic needs. Fundamentally, what we are after is enabling a workplace that allows us to be our most effective regardless of whether the action we are performing is about collaboration or doing something for ourselves.

For example, the most common way of sharing documents today is by attaching them to email messages. Or, if you are trying to be more efficient, you might first upload the file to a website and then send a link. However, in my opinion, it is too late to think about how to share a document after you finished it. We need to consider up front how to work as individuals in ways that enable opportunities to make our colleagues their most effective.

Perhaps the best way is to keep your files in a location that others can easily access. One approach is to work directly within a collaborative workspace product like SharePoint or eRoom and stop storing files in "My Documents". Web office suites take this a step further and don't even require the person you are sharing with to have an application loaded on their computer. The application and document are both provided by the web office suite.

Initially the key to success for web office suites will be their ability to meet a particular set of needs and then branch out from there. Microsoft Word is fantastic for authoring a document that will be printed but this is a capability the online word processors appear to be avoiding for the moment. For example, I couldn't find any way to force a page break with any of the products I used.

Instead web office suites seem to be focusing on activities such as authoring blog posts and others not related to producing a printed document. Zoho has an incredibly powerful online application builder called Zoho Creator. Think simple (as in easy to use) yet powerful version of Microsoft Access for the web. These types of applications are especially well suited for web delivery. More on this some other time.

I have no doubt the level of sophistication in web office suites will continue to rise. Service providers are adding new features and improving their user interfaces using rich elements. But, are web applications ever going to be rich enough? Don't write them off so quickly. Every time I have done that in the past I was proven wrong. Products like Zoho and Google Docs show that web applications can have a rich responsive interface in addition to the added benefits of wider accessibility and collaboration.

And don't think the improvements won't continue to come for AJAX applications in general. With the level of interest in AJAX reaching the stratosphere expect more innovation to follow. For example, if you look into the capabilities applications can leverage in libraries and frameworks like JQuery or Scriptaculous, the potential for even richer web applications is phenomenal.

Offline access may be the final feature that convinces many of us. But will it be something everyone uses or just the one feature that companies need to know is there before committing? Certainly offline access is needed by those traveling with laptops but online applications can still benefit telecommuting workers who have their own PC at home.

And finally, trust. Do you trust having your documents stored somewhere else? Will you ever be ready to use Google Docs (for example) as your only word processor? For me, not yet. However, at one time I asked the same question about email systems but I am now a faithful Gmail user.