Office Web Apps

Microsoft has invented an interesting way to promote its online office suite Office Web Apps. They have inbuilt their online office applications in the most popular Russian email service - Mail.Ru. Now when Mail.Ru users receive attached document they can view them directly in browser. There is no editing for now because Mail.Ru doesn't provide any document repository. Interestingly that Mail.Ru became the first in the world (after Windows Live Hotmail) email service with integrated Office Web Apps. And since Microsoft decided to hold this experiment in Russian internet, its quite strange that they partnered with Mail.Ru, but not with the biggest Russian search engine Yandex, which has more reasons to support Microsoft in their fight against Google. Perhaps because the Yandex-Mail already has its own document viewer. True, unlike Microsoft's it violates the document formatting and can't search in a document.

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.

When the MS Office Web Apps launched, only  the Excel Web App allowed to collaborate on online documents in real time. Now the trick is also available in the online Word. Though it's not so cool as in Google Docs. To let co-editors see your changes you have to click the Save button, then co-editors will see the notification in the status bar, then click Save and only then see your changes. There is no chat / comments like in Google Docs, but at least you can see who is currently editing every part of the document. Meanwhile co-authoring in the online Word works only in the free Windows Live Office (SkyDrive) and is not yet available in Office 365.

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).

Microsoft has finally killed the intrigue on the future of Silverlight in web-applications (recall this intrigue emerged at the end of last year). The new version of the online file storage Windows SkyDrive (which works as the basis of all Windows Live services) is completely rebuilt on HTML5 instead of Silverlight (even video player is now working on HTML5). SkyDrive is now much faster and supports all browsers (even Google Chrome). Along with the underlying technology shift, the developers have rebuild the service interface - it's now very similar to the Windows folder interface. Moreover, users of Windows 7 and Internet Explorer 9 can get to SkyDrive directly from the taskbar and with one click create Word, Excel, PowerPoint documents in Office Web Apps online editors:

Google continues to use the fact that the main competitor of the new MS Office 2010 is not Google Docs but Office 2007/2003. "Why should I pay some hundreds of dollars for the new Office 2010?" - user thinking. "First, it has more beautiful buttons. Second, you can sync with online Office Web Apps" - says Microsoft. "Hey, you don't need to update! " - Google enters the conversation - "Now you can sync between Office 2003/2007 and Google Docs in real time." Today Google has introduced Cloud Connect - the plug-in that allows to open documents, spreadsheets and presentations from Google Docs in MS Office applications, edit them and save back. Moreover, multiple people can edit the same document simultaneously and Google will keep track of the versions and conflict resolution.

Today Microsoft has rolled out the second update to its online office suite Office Web Apps and made it available in 7 more countries, including Australia, Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Russia and Switzerland. In the first update in August some very useful features appeared: charts and auto fill in Excel Web App and free clip-art gallery in PowerPoint Web App. Today update is also very interesting. Now you can embed PowerPoint presentations as well as Excel charts and tables to any site or blog. If you insert a table from Excel - visitors can change cell values to recalculate results, but the source excel-file in your account will not change. Conversely, if you change something in the original excel-file - table or chart in the widget will be updated too, so visitors always see the latest information. According to Microsoft, during the first 100 days from the release, Office Web App where used by over 20 million people.

Yesterday, Microsoft officially launched Windows Live Office with Office Web Apps for english-speaking users (US, UK, Canada & Ireland). But anyone can already use them by switching the language in the Live ID account to English. Documents can be accessed in Office menu or SkyDrive menu. To understand why, read our review. Unfortunately, the first impression of Windows Live Office - is negative. Of course, we knew that online office apps will be light. And the fact that there are no diagrams and no cell autofill in the Excel Web App, and no rich paste in OneNote Web App, and no file move between folders in Live Office - all these is not disappointing. But the main thing that we expected - correct Word formatting support - actually doesn't work.

Microsoft has done a great job to confuse users with their online office applications. Office Live, Office Live Workspace, Office Live Small Business, Live Folders, Foldershare, Live Docs, SkyDrive, Live Mesh, Docs.com, Office Web Apps - a lot of similar in functionality or name services, formed in result of numerous acquisitions and rebrandings. Taking into account the existence of Exchange and Sharepoint SaaS versions (BPOS), it becomes a mystery - what Microsoft's online office suite is and what it's target audience. The new version of Windows Live Wave 4 (which includes the online office) is trying to bring this chaos into order, however, again  by the numerous mergers and renamings. Let's try to understand all this stuff.

Today, Microsoft officially launched its Office 2010 for companies using the volume-licensing. For other companies and users the office suite will be available in June. The web-based version - Office Web Apps, that is the main new feature in Office 2010 and its main weapon in competition against Google Docs, will appear also in June. Google responded to the release in very original way - they used the fact that the main competitor to Office 2010 is actually not Google Docs, but Office 2007 (or 2003). The point is that why pay several hundred dollars for the new version of Office 2010 (+ Sharepoint 2010), if using Office 2007 in combination with Google Docs, you can get even more features at virtually no cost. Here is the comparison table, that was published in the Google Enterprise blog:

Today, Microsoft and Facebook opened the new service (+ Facebook app) Docs.com, which allows to store and display office documents on your Facebook profile and share them (for viewing and collaborative editing) with your friends, groups or all Facebook users. Documents can be viewed in the browser with the new viewer and edited with Office Web Applications. The online editors are still available only to beta testers, and their reviews are not very positive. But the point of the service is not in the editors but in Facebook integration. Will it be useful for business? At first glance, business-users will not use Facebook to collaborate on documents. But as a marketing channel to promote MS Office Web - it can work. Especially in light of the new Facebook plan, aimed to grab the Internet:

When Microsoft demoed the Office Web Apps, we noted that nobody knows what will Google Docs look like when Office 2010 finally launch. MS Office Web will appear at least in 2 months and this question is still relevant. While Microsoft is fixing bugs in its web office, Google is constantly improving Docs. The new version of Google Docs features the significantly improved collaborative editing technology. It has a sidebar, which displays a list of users who are editing or viewing the document right now. On the same panel is chat. Each user is assigned a color and you can watch in real-time how your co-workers edit document (like in Google Wave or Etherpad). Moreover, this technology works in text documents and spreadsheets, and in the new Google Drawings.

At last (after the July announcement) Microsoft is opening web-based Office 2010  applications to beta-testers. The web Office will have a long official title: Microsoft Office Web Applications. As we already informed, it will be available in two editions: Free and Business. The business version will work on top of SharePoint 2010 (behind the firewall). And free version will work on top of the online file storage service  Windows Live SkyDrive (that provides 25Gb for free). Yesterday one thousand of SkyDrive happy users already got an access to online Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote. And their reviews are quite different - from "awesome" to "tedious". Here are the most interesting points: