Office 365 vs Zoho

Microsoft has released an update fro its online collaboration suite Office 365, which includes 30 new features. The most important of them are support for Windows Phone 7.5, opportunity to edit documents stored in SharePoint Online on Windows Phone, Lync client for Windows Phone and Mac, ability to integrate Sharepoint Online with third-party applications (via SharePoint Business Connectivity Services), improved file uploading and sharing tools. Microsoft also made Office 365 available in 22 new countries including Argentina, South Africa and Taiwan. Together with Office 365 its free mass-market alternative SkyDrive has been updated. It also features the new HTML5-uploader an slick file sharing (that we have already mentioned). These new features, and the new file management tools are shown in this video:

It seems, Microsoft is already feeling confidence in its mobile future. According to The Daily report, in the 1st half of 2012 Microsoft will release Mobile Office for the competing platform - iPad. Of course, iPad is very popular among business users and Microsoft can easily dramatically increase its incomes by selling mobile Word and Excel for the iPad at $10 (the planned price). But from the political point of view, Microsoft is not interested in making iPad even more attractive product, because it competes with the upcoming Windows 8 tablets. However, after the intention of HP and several other manufacturers to support Windows 8, Microsoft is not afraid of iPad any more. As expected, the MS Office for iPad will be significantly stripped-down compared to the desktop version and will be integrated with the online service Office 365.

Remember how Mark Benioff laughed at Microsoft's anti-advertising campaign? It turns out that Microsoft also can do similar things. A few days ago Google launched the advertising campaign that encourages users to switch from draconian email systems and their “embarrassingly outdated addresses” over to GMail, which features such niceties as free phone calls and video chat. For this campaign the video (see above) was created. You can see the red link to this video in your GMail-account. But Microsoft, whose Hotmail service is obviously one of the targets of Google's campaign, isn’t keeping quiet. Today another video hit the Web:

For now the SaaS suite Microsoft Office 365 includes e-mail server Exchange Online, portal Sharepoint Online, document editors Office Web Apps and communication server Lync Online. But Microsoft has plans to expand this suite and make it the one-stop-service for small and medium business. The BlackBerry Office 365 module has been already announced. It will provide Blackberry users the push-access to Office 365 data. Also, we have previously reported about the plans to add MS Dynamics CRM Online and the future MS Dynamics ERP to Office 365. And according to the latest (insider) information in late 2012 or early 2013 the suite will be expanded by the online version of project management solution MS Project and the diagram editor MS Visio.

Today Steve Ballmer at the press-event in New York officially announced the launch of the cloud solution Office 365. And it's nice that it becomes available globally. Office 365 is offered in 21 languages (English, Br Portuguese, Chinese (simplified, traditional), Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Polish, Spanish, Swedish, Romanian, and Russian) and 40 countries (US, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong SAR, Hungary, India, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Korea, Luxembourg, Malaysia, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Peru, Poland, Portugal, Puerto Rico, Romania, Russia, Singapore, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Trinidad and Tobago, and the UK).

Next week Microsoft will officially launch its online office suite Office 365, and of course, the major competitors, Google and Box.net, want to spoil this party. First, they have integrated their solutions. Now Box.net users can edit any stored document in the Google Docs online editors. In addition, they can (in just one click) create new documents in Box.net folders by opening Google Docs apps. Recall that Box.net also features the similar integration with Zoho Docs, so now users will have a choice. Box.net CEO, Aaron Levy, says that he played with the beta version of Office 365 and that it’s lacking the power and functionality of the bunch Box + Google Docs.

Microsoft has opened its online Office 365 for public beta testing and there are already first reviews, so we can already judge of how this service will justify its label "Google Apps killer". Recall, Office 365 includes online versions of Exchange, Sharepoint, Lync and the office suite Office Web Apps. So the functionality of Office 365 is even better than in Google Apps. But "killing Google Apps" hardly possible because these are quite different products. Office 365 is more appropriate for medium and large companies, who used to work in Microsoft-oriented IT infrastructure, that already have an IT administrator who knows Active Directory, Exchange and Sharepoint settings. Without such administrator you can't manage Office 365, it's not so simple as Google Apps.

We still remember the time when Zoho launched one new SaaS app per month. But, of course, it could not last forever. Having reached almost 30 apps, Zoho recently is only updating them from time to time. But the desire to create something new hasn't gone. That's why Zoho developers decided to take an old service, add some features, rename it and release as a new one. They added Twitter, Email and CRM integration to Zoho Discussions, renamed it to Zoho Commentbox and voila - the new app is ready! Even the prices and descriptions haven't changed. Moreover, the old service - Zoho Discussions - still exists (so Zoho has more apps). Recall, Zoho Discussions (or Zoho Commentbox) allows to create an online customer community for support and ideas collection. Previously, these communities were created on phpbb or vBulletin forum engines, and now on such specialized services. The most famous representative of this class - is Get Satisfaction.

It seems that the days of Flash as a platform for the Rich web interfaces are really coming to an end. Online presentation services, for which the Rich-interface is most important, are ditching Flash in favour of HTML5. Last year, the market leader, SlideRocket released the HTML5-viewer and today the most popular presentation sharing service SlideShare has done the same. Moreover, SlideShare not just added the HTML5-view option but completely removed the Flash-option. Developers say the new HTML5-viewer is 30% faster and displays presentation on tablets (like iPad) and smartphones. In addition, you can now select and copy text from a presentation with the help of the mouse.

About a year ago Zoho added the bug-tracking module to its project-management service Zoho Projects. But the trouble with this module was that it was available only in the most expensive version of the service, which costs $699/year. Now Zoho launches a separate service Zoho BugTracker. "Finally, they wake up!" - most developers will say now and start testing the service. They will be even more delighted when find out that Zoho BugTracker provides the interface on their native language (16 languages supported), integrated with the popular free project hosting GitHub, integrated with Google Docs, fully integrated with Email (for notifications, and adding bugs), contains forum, file storage, activity streams, custom workflows, custom fields, custom views and reports. However, the positive will be finished when the developers take a look at the price.

As known, Zoho uses to make friends with Google. Despite the fact that both companies are developing online offices for SMB, Zoho always combines its applications with Google Apps, rather than compete with them. Zoho is the champion by the number of applications in the Google Apps Marketplace (i.e. integrated into Google Apps). And maybe that's why Zoho for a long time didn't touch the holy grail of Google Apps - email app GMail. In fact Zoho launched it's email service (Zoho Mail) almost two years ago, but it was just a personal email service. It was as functional as GMail and even allowed to use your own domain, but it had no administrative panel that allows to create accounts and manage security policies. So it couldn't be used as a corporate mail server. Now it can.

Zoho has finally filled the most evident gap in its package of online applications for small business - released the online accounting service Zoho Books. Now we can state with full responsibility that Zoho provides the complete set of tools for small business. Zoho Books allows to control financial flows, bank accounts, create and send invoices, receive payments via PayPal or credit cards, plan revenues and expenses. It's integrated with Zoho CRM, Email, and spreadsheets, making it more suitable for accountants and other staff. Zoho Invoice users will be given a simple way to upgrade to Zoho Books. Zoho Books - is the first Zoho product that has no free version. Only the 30-day trial. This is not surprising, since in most small companies there is only one accountant and providing a free single-user version would be nonsense. So the service costs - $ 24/mes for single account. For each additional user you will have to pay extra $ 5 per month.

Zoho has finally added a Helpdesk service to its SaaS suite. We say finally, because the helpdesk sphere - is primary for Zoho. After all, this company has earned its major money thanks to ManageEngine ServiceDesk. And the new service Zoho Support probably will be also successful. For now it's perhaps the most feauture-rich SaaS Helpdesk on the market. It includes ticket system, knowledge base, customer portal, e-mail integration, contacts/companies base (integrated with Zoho CRM), product and SLA catalogs, workflow-engine (for ticket-processing automation), dashboard, alerts (via email and sms), analytical reports, access control system, powerful customization options. And all this (as usual for Zoho) - for low price or free of charge.

Today, Google has significantly improved Google Apps security by implementing two-factor authentication. If an account administrator activates this feature, users after entering Google Apps login / password will need to enter a secret code that will be sent to them via SMS, or generated by mobile application or dictated via phone call. Thus, even if somebody steals your Google login and password - he won't be able to use them without your phone. Such security scheme is used in many online banking and online payment systems. At the moment the new feature is available in Google Apps Premiere Edition. Soon it will appear in free Google Apps accounts, as well as in personal GMail-accounts.