Web 2.0 and Open Office

Normally in this Blog I don't talk techie stuff, but today seems to be one of those watershed days that should be shouted out to everyone.

For a while now I've used two online and FREE Web 2.0 office applications services: Google Docs [formerly Docs and Spreadsheets] (docs.google.com) and the product suite from Zoho (www.zoho.com). I've also been a fan of the Sun sponsored free OpenOffice (www.openoffice.org) which was just updated. They all have their strengths and weaknesses, but for the average computer user they are nonetheless viable options to buying a full version of Microsoft Office. Best of all the allow the importing and exporting of documents in the standard MS Office file formats plus the ability to save files in the PDF format.

Yesterday Google bolstered its Google Docs suite with the introduction of its online version of Microsoft's PowerPoint; it's simply called Presentations. Presentation joins the existing elements for Documents (word) and Spreadsheets. Neat stuff but if you think that's nifty, then check out Zoho to see how many other office applications they offer.

Today, however everyone got trumped by IBM as they introduced their own free office product suite named Lotus Symphony (yes, it is a recycled name, but it's still a new product) and joined the Open Office movement. In the next few days I'll try to download a copy of Symphony and check it out (symphony.lotus.com). Looking at the minimum specs for Symphony does point out one potential near-term drawback, it requires 1 GB of RAM. Regardless, with the weight of IBM now behind the movement, the times they are a changing.

Why are these developments significant? Simply stated, I believe that in the next several years businesses will seriously question the necessity for purchasing common office applications from the likes of Microsoft or Corel. Instead they will join the Web 2.0 and Open Office revolution.

Think of the implications. For one thing, it's a step toward minimizing the digital divide by reducing the cost of computer ownership. It's also a way to reduce some the administrative overhead business commit toward software license and copyright management. It's also a way to facilitate the rapid adoption of new features: if you're using a Web 2.0 office application, new features are available with your next browser refresh; if you're using an Open Office application, you can bypass the evaluate/plan, budget, purchase, deploy cycle of technology tyranny and move straight from evaluation to deployment. Finally, Open Office products save documents in the Open Document format which is intended to not only be a universal file format, but is also a strategy for preventing your older documents from falling victim to legacy formats that are no long available or supported.

What do you think? Are we on the cusp of a new application paradigm or is this just hype and hope?