Grab a good seat while you can. The online office suite market is about to get a bit more crowded. Oracle, it appears, is working on Oracle Cloud Office — which will potentially compete with Google Apps, Microsoft Office Web, Zoho and a range of other SaaS productivity applications. Here’s some perspective.
As Oracle digests Sun Microsystems, plenty of pundits are wondering what will become of Sun’s OpenOffice.org and StarOffice efforts. On the upside, Oracle says it will keep promoting OpenOffice.org. But our resident blogger hasn’t heard much about StarOffice’s fate…
Oracle Cloud Office
Oh, and just to make things extra interesting: Oracle has been working on something called Oracle Cloud Office, according to Oracle Chief Corporate Architect Edward Screven. Kudos to ComputerWorld for picking up on the effort.
When will Oracle Cloud Office arrive? And will the Oracle PartnerNetwork (OPN) Specialized partners jump on the bandwagon? Hmmm… Lots of questions. Very few answers.
But there will be plenty of SaaS competition from folks like Microsoft, Zoho and, um… Google.
As part of the forthcoming Microsoft Office 2010 launch, Microsoft is preparing an Office Web release that will reside on the Internet. Plus, certain Office 2010 enterprise licenses will permit customers to host Office Web on their own. Also, folks like Zoho continue to turn heads in some SaaS circles. And a growing number of VARs and MSPs have joined the Google Apps reseller program.
Scores of VARs and MSPs are also testing virtualized desktop solutions and hosted desktop offerings from a range of service providers. One tip for VARs: keep an eye on ChannelCloud. No doubt, Oracle Cloud Office will face plenty of competition… when it arrives.
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So many new solutions are being released under the “collaboration” and “productivity” banner, and yet offer such varied solutions, that the market is getting really confusing.
On the one end there are solutions like Google Wave and Adobe.com, on the other hand Google Apps, then there are social networkingsey solutions like SalesForce chatter, and finally there is SharePoint! I had done an article to try and conceptualize the market – http://www.ebizq.net/topics/saas/features/11873.html.
But with so many new solutions which have plunged into the market since then, it may be a bit dated!
Pankaj
http://www.hyperoffice.com
Pankaj: The VAR Guy agrees… lots of “collaboration” and “productivity” SaaS noise. Similar to all the ASP (application service provider) noise in the 1999-2000 timeframe. We’re moving into a cloud bubble that will ultimately pop. Some folks will succeed. Many will fail.
-TVG