Office 2.0 Enterprise Showdown: Zoho vs. Google Apps vs. Microsoft
Zoho plows ahead with its incremental, always in the news, product enhancement announcement strategy: An integrated start page.
Office 2.0 Enterprise Showdown? In one corner Zoho, the (paid and unpaid) blogosphere underdog favorite AND in the other corner, consumer heavyweight Google PLUS referee Microsoft.
The Office 2.0 Conference stage is set for next week AND both Microsoft contendors are TEASING BIG NEWS.
Zoho has made no secret of its enterprise intentions and Raju Vegesna confirmed them to me last week during my chat with him about Why Google Apps Competitor Zoho is Powered by Google Gears Offline
Contrary to conventional blogosphere wisdom about supposed big, bad Microsoft Office bloat, Vegesna expressed high esteem for the flagship Microsoft product, calling Office the “gold standard” of productivity applications.
Zoho is actually impressed with the breadth of functionailty offered by Microsoft Office and aims to emulate the Microsoft full-featured enterprise strategy by continually addding to and enhancing the functionality of its own prodcutivity applications with the goal of providing an enterprise caliber office suite. Vegesna told me Microsoft Office “sets the bar” for office apps.
Has Zoho met that bar?
Will Zoho announce a “Zoho for the Enterprise” at next week’s Office 2.0 Conference which it is sponsoring? All signals indicate YES.
Fellow Office 2.0 Conference sponsor, and direct Zoho competitor, Google, has been making some Office Apps noise of its own, even while leaving all the Google Gears fun for Zoho.
While Zoho enjoys an omnipresent blogosphere “sponsorship”, Google is running a “Switch to Google Apps” blogosphere banner campaign.
That coy Google! “Switch” from which Office application, pray tell. Could Google be hinting at the “gold standard” of Office apps offered by the company Googler in Chief Eric Schmidt insists he is NOT competing against, Microsoft?
Google has oddly been even more coy about its Google Pack integration of Sun’s StarOffice which favors a competing office productivity suite over its own Apps.
WHY is Google so StarOffice-Google Apps-Google Gears shy? I have been asking here at Insider Chatter, SEE Google Office Ignores Sun StarOffice: Microsoft Killer Still MIA
AND I asked Google directly:
Zoho is a direct competitor of Google Apps. Does Google Apps intend to use Google Gears for its offline component, as Zoho is doing?
If Google Apps intends to use Google Gears, 1) why has it not done so to date, and 2) What is the Google Apps’s reaction to competitor Zoho being first to announce the use of Google Gears, not Google Apps.
If Google Apps does not intend to use Google Gears, 1) why not, and 2) will Google Apps use a non-Google Gears solution to build an offline component?
When will Google Apps start to have offline functionality, as Google Apps competitor Zoho already does, via the use of Google Gears.
Google repsonded to me with the following re Google Gears and Google Apps:
We made Google Gears (a free, fully open source technology) available to anyone as part of our longer term vision for the web browser to be the ideal platform for deploying all types of applications. We’re excited to see developers start to apply this technology in innovative and interesting ways.
We’re working on enabling various Google applications with Gears but we don’t have specific timelines to share.
Will the time be right next week at the Office 2.0 Conference?
Google had announced a “PowerPoint” addition to Google Apps by the end of the summer, an announcement of a Google Gears enabled one during Labor Day week would fulfill that promise.
Zoho’s bold New Year’s predictions last January:
We believe 2007 will be the year of the enterprise Web where AJAX applications will play a crucial role in the enterprise space. Web 2.0 will help enterprises drastically reduce their IT spending and we believe this will bring new opportunities for Zoho in enterprises.
Sounds very Googley indeed.
As we are headed into Q4 2007, however, if Zoho intends to fulfill its own 2007 enterprise predictions, time is of the essence: The Office 2.0 Conference next week may indeed be perfect timing for a “Zoho For the Enterprise” official announcement.
Fasten your seat belts: It’s going to be a wild, wild, Web office ride!
ALSO READ: Microsoft Works 9 Frenzy Overblown: What ‘Free, Ad Supported’ Really Means and Google Apps Packs It Up: StarOffice On Microsoft Desktop Rules and Hey Google: When Can Matt Cutts Ditch Microsoft PowerPoint?
PLUS: OpenProj Unleashed: Projity SaaS Microsoft Office Project ‘Direct Hit’