Immitation is the Sincerest form of Flattery

As you know they say, Immitation is the Sincerest form of Flattery. BlueTie has offered Free and Pro versions since October and there are some very key similarities, judge for yourself:

Google: http://www.google.com/a/help/intl/en/admins/editions.html

 BlueTie: http://www.bluetie.com/smb_content/products/products.php

If a tree falls in the forest….

I think we’ve had some interesting posts in the last couple weeks and our visits remain consistent but everyone’s been very quiet on the comments. It’s Q1 and everyone’s probably very busy. Here’s a quick list of the most interesting in case you haven’t had time to read through. Click through to a couple and let us know what you think.

 Why ‘Free-mail’ has a bad reputation

“…And finally, here’s the one I don’t understand: 

“But the real sticking point may be whether you want to trust your most important messages to any free service at all.”

I don’t know what this means. Why wouldn’t I want to trust my messages to a free service? What is the opposite of a ‘free service’ and why should I ‘trust’ them?”

Online Office Suite Review and Comparison

“…For those of you who are watching the online office suite marketplace, it also notes that Google and ThinkFree may be in negotiations. Do you think it will happen?”

Microsoft and Online Office Update

“…It’s a nice SWOT analysis of Microsoft’s strengths and weaknesses, opportunities and threats. It ends with a list of options for Microsoft which I’ve placed into this handy Zoho poll. What do you think?”

Monetizing Web 2.0 - Solved

“…The model that BlueTie is building is beyond ‘Free-mium’, it’s the monetization model of the future. How long before Goolge replaces those ads in Gmail with integrated services like this?”

Online Office Suite Review and Comparison

Computerworld has a recent review of online office suites, Ajax13, Google, Thinkfree and Zoho. It’s a good article. If your considering using an online office suite for your business it’s worth a read.

For those of you who are watching the online office suite marketplace, it also notes that Google and ThinkFree may be in negotiations. Do you think it will happen?

Microsoft Is Your Competition

Support for the position that Microsoft Office will remain strong continues to grow. There are two interesting articles on PC World Canada.

The first a two-parter called Office Doomsday? (part two: Office Doomsday: Backsliding to the desktop) is another interesting real life experience with trying to use online products. Similar to the link in our previous post Microsoft is Worth It (probably better titled, now that I think of it, Office is Worth It).

The other is titled Online Takes on Office and is along the same vein as our prior post Microsoft Will Survive (also probably better titled, Office Will Survive). THis article highlights that Redmond is taking notice of online competitors by noting; “in its August 10-K filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Microsoft specifically listed ThinkFree as an Office rival.”

So how are online document companies going to position their products against office? What is the value proposition, key features and tag line that are going to resonate with people and get them to leave MS Office? Put on your marketing hats an throw out some tag lines…..

Google Toolbar for Firefox with Google Docs & Spreadsheets

Version 3 of the Google Toolbar for Firefox is in Beta. The new toolbar supports opening office documents via Google Docs & Spreadsheets. The description for this feature is:

“Choose the file types you’d like to open from within your browser. Google Docs & Spreadsheets will display these files in a new Firefox window when you either drag the file icon into your browser, click a link to a file on a web page or double-click on a file icon.”

Although it is still unclear to me how this works and I was not able to quickly figure it out. So I’ll have to spend more time on it to understand it but that makes me wonder about it’s adoption prospects given it seems less than ideally intuitive.

Also an interesting question, it they get it to work effectively and adoption rates are there will it impact Zoho and other players to have Google Docs and Spreadsheets integrated into the toolbar and thus to some extent the browser?

Security of Web-Based Apps Questioned

So Microsoft has this Security Advisory web site that highlights new vulnerabilities identified in their products. As I’m sure you know the vulnerabilities of Microsoft products is a long standing point of discussion. And so someone, no name included on the posting, tries to jump in and say that Zoho is safe, and presumably to identify that as a product benefit.  (I see also that Zoho has their link bait strategy well in hand.)  At first glance that might be perceived as contradictory to the post I read a couple days ago about information leaks in web-based products.

I think going forward it’s going to be important for business like Zoho, Google and others to distinguish when talking about applications security vs. security of information due to how users save their documents.

What I’d really like is another opinion on the security of these online document tools, Zoho, Google Docs, do they have vulnerabilities? Am I putting my company at risk by using them?

Microsoft Office is Worth It

Vitaman had a very interesting post on their path to determining what software tools to use for their business. They are a tech company but the analogy is pertinent for most any small business. Most interesting is that they decided to purchase Word and Excel. They tried a couple of web-based tools but still decided to shell out the money to buy the Office Suite. Is this what’s happening more often than not? Are small businesses looking at the free web-based options and deciding it’s just to ‘iffy’, are the features I need there, will I be able to get support, will they be in business a year from now, will my documents be safe? The answers are just a bunch of “I don’t know’s” and few businesses are going to put their business at risk. They need definitive answers and for now are just deciding the price and convenience is as much an investment in piece of mind as it is software.

Solution Watch

I found this blog today. This article has a summary of some online applications and has a feature comparison between Zoho, Thinkfree and a couple others. The article is targeted to education but has insights for small businesses too.

I think more interesting, although slightly off topic, is the general  content of the site. There are many tools highlighted in this blog that I had never heard of that are interesting and offer compeling considerations for what is surely to be future integration and consolidation between these applications. I’ve added it to my feeds, you should too.

Open Source Exchange Alternatives

Justin Silverton put together a short list of Open Source Exchange Alternatives.  Are there others not listed here? There seem to be more and more players everyday. Some offer just email and calendaring, some offer email and calendaring with documents, some offer project collaboration without email. How is this going to shake out? It’s fine that many of these companies are getting press, Zoho, Zimbra, Google Docs, but how are small businesses being penetrated with these offerings? Are they being penetrated with these offerings? What is the future of Hosted Exchange will all of these new AJAX competitors that are likely to have more features? Lots of questions, would be great to get some input here from the players, I know your reading, I see your traffic….

Google Apps for Enterprise

An interesting take on Google’s “product maturity market model”.  The Google Apps for Enterprise, with the elements noted is a similar offering to Office Live. I’m interested to know if the mail and talk will be enterprise based, that is for example, the address book contains a list of all employees and talk is limited to between employees on a particular enterprise, similar to BlueTie. Certainly they’ll have to make Docs an option within the enterprise to compete with Zimbra and eventually Microsoft. Very interesting though….