Once you register (integrated with Google Apps), you can add your employees/create projects/Tasks/Repositories etc) – the company even has built few relevant applications like Employee Recognition, Birthday Gifts and most importantly apps across devices (they have desktop application as well as iPhone, Android, Blackberry and iPad apps).

The US based based company (with Product Management/Engineering office in Pune) recently launched new features like enterprise grade micro-streams, instant messaging and group messaging capabilities to single click updates. What’s commendable is the way team has modularized the product, especially feature based pricing plans – one of a very few À La Carte models one gets to see.

You can buy the complete suite or individual modules like MangoTalk (microblogging), MongoDocs (document management), MongoTask (Task Management) to MongoProjects, MongoIdeas and MongoEvents.

The product is free for 10 users and offers following features

• Enterprise Grade Microstreams, Instant Messaging and Presence: MangoApps seamlessly combine business social networking with enterprise-grade Instant Messaging to enable open and immediate communication. With MangoApps 2.0, teams can now instantly start group chats or conference calls from directly within any of the MangoApps applications.
• Comprehensive Deployment Support: MangoApps supports all three major deployment models: multi-tenant SaaS (fully outsourced), single-tenant SaaS (your own instance of MangoApps), and on-premise (locally hosted behind a firewall), providing organizations with both the flexibility and security requirements that they demand.
• Application Modularity: MangoApps allows users to purchase applications in an a-la-carte fashion. Since many teams are not comfortable committing themselves to an entire suite of products all at once, this allows them to use just what they need and add more functionality as desired.
• Integration with Third-Party Applications: MangoApps is built on the MangoSpring Engage platform and version 2.0 makes it a snap to integrate popular third-party platforms such as Google Apps, the ability to automatically sync from the desktop, and two-way integration with email.

The team claims that the pricing is 33% cheaper than Yammer and almost 90% cheaper than Salesforce Chatter.

While Microsoft rules the enterprise world (followed by IBM), Google has taken partnership route to target the enterprise industry.

Google has partnered with TCS to provide web-based business connectivity services to companies in India. They plan to jointly provide business tools such as email, instant messaging, calendar functionality, video and office presentations over the internet using the Google Apps software suite.

The portfolio of business tools, powered by Google Apps™, is a significant move by both parties to bring value-added applications to Indian enterprises while offering localized pricing, billing and support.

The service is simple to subscribe, easy to use and streamlines the complexities of IT while allowing businesses to pay for only what they need. Indian organizations, particularly the emerging enterprises, will now have expanded access to Tata Communications’ cloud-based software services, helping them migrate their IT requirements to a pay-as-you-use business model. Building on Tata Communications’ position as a SaaS service provider, the portfolio will help organizations reduce IT cost and complexity and be more productive. It will be particularly beneficial to companies with fast growing teams, offices spread across the country, or staff who travel frequently.

Google Apps Users in India

Worldwide, Google has close to 2 million customers, amd 25 million active users – numbers for India do not look so healthy.  100,000 customers and 1 million userbase. The TCS partnership, I believe will be more focused towards mid sized companies where there is a fair bit of customization/training/integration that needs to be done.

Focus on Reseller Program?

Small businesses would prefer to run on Google Apps and keep the TCO minimal, but right now the biggest challenge is app discovery.

Apps reseller progam needs more boost. Google needs to work with Indian resellers to help them bring moolahs. Take a look at the pic [“Google Business Email at your own Domain”] – essentially, this resellers sees a huge value in selling the apps program, but doesn’t have the necessary infrastructure/support to market it. Putting up this message on one’s car shows his/her desperation to get the word out [I am sure you must have received a few of those spammy emails from companies claiming they are the ‘only’ resellers in India].

Google India, are you listening?

The challenge with wikis is the information overload and lack of a good control management system in place. Infact, I also believe that wikis in many organizations are abused because they come for free and there is hardly any project level policy regarding wiki creation.

Zoho has launched a new version of its Wiki software, Wiki 2.0 that manages part of the Wiki overdose challenge – that of information organization and searchability.

New features introduced in Zoho Wiki 2.0 are

• Workspaces
  Workspaces promote sharing and collaboration within the team and also with other groups. They can function as separate wikis, complete with own administrative controls, security setup and full customization option. For eg., An IT Company can have team spaces for different projects, for HR, for marketing, for sales, etc. Within a school wiki,  teachers can create individual workspaces for each class.
• Permissions
  Wikis can have multiple group permissions for better access controls and thereby ensure fine grained security. A project wiki can be assigned to a particular team and can be shared with other team members and also with clients across the globe.

The new Wiki comes with a price and the free version comes with a single wiki with 3 workspaces and 3 users. Each additional user costs $8 per month and each additional wiki costs $5 per month.

Office 2010 has been officially released and the base version (i.e. Home and Student version) is available for INR 4,250.

Office Home and Business Edition (i.e. base + outlook)is available for INR 10,000 while Office professional (includes Access and Publisher 2010) is available for INR 23,700.

Which version shall I  buy?

Check out this comparison chart that will give you the complete picture of what lies in different packages.

In the last few days, we have reviewed some of the Office 2010 applications [Review of Outlook 2010, Powerpoint 2010] as well as the rivalry between Goog and MS.

Here is a recap of the same

• What Microsoft says about Google Apps? Incomplete Solution, Unfamiliar User Experience
• Google Launches Apps Cloud Calculator – Another shot at Office 2010

Will you go for Office 2010 or instead try out the new version of Goog docs [isn’t it smart on Goog’s behalf to launch the newer version of Google Office, a day before Microsoft?].

Instead of the general talk about why cloud is a better alternative, Google substantiates its stand and has assigned numbers to certain key usage of an IT system. For instance,

• IT Manager’s hourly wage : $70/hr
• Avg Email Inbox size: 0.5 GB
• Avg. number of spam messages an employee receives : 77
• Avg. number of people in a team/group: 10
• Number of document revisions: 5
• Planned/Unplanned downtime : 150/month.

Google cites certain data points about employee productivity – for instance

• Average employee is 2.8X productive (within 6 months) if he starts working mobile.
• Employee communication increased by 36% within 6 months after adopting Google Apps.
• Less headache for IT department as they do not need to worry too much about installing patches (5 minutes for each user to update and restart their m/c after each Patch Tuesday). MS had 71 critical and important alerts in 2009 – so imagine the unproductivity that transcends through the entire company.
• Minimal Data Loss – 60% employees have data and 1 out of 10 laptops are stolen in the first year of purchase (FBI data). Now if all your data is on the cloud, you don’t have to worry about data loss. Similarly, you do not need to worry about Data recovery cost.

Few weeks back, Google also shared a comparison between its offering and Microsoft 2010 promises that essentially puts Google Apps much ahead of Office 2010.

Google is pitching *real time* collaboration and less TCO (zero maintenance) vs. Microsoft which is playing a Better Software+Service game.

Who wins? Only a CIO can tell.

Recommended Read:

• Review of Microsoft Outlook 2010
• Review of Microsoft PowerPoint 2010

We earlier reviewed the key features in Outlook 2010 and today, we will tell you some of the interesting stuff in PowerPoint 2010.

Co-authoring

Multiple people will be able to work on the same presentation and add to this, integration with office communicator makes the collaboration more interactive.

As far as MS’s biggest competitor is concerned, this feature will be available in the next release.

Video Files

You will be able to edit/trim/select relevant sections in the video, all using the new version of PowerPoint. You can also set the video to fade in and out at specified intervals and apply a variety of video styles and effects. We played with this feature a lot and while it worked perfectly with Youtube videos, we faced issues while embedding videos from sites like blip.tv.

Broadcast

Power2010 will enable you to instantly broadcast your presentations by sending out a URL (public/private access) so that people can view your presentation on the Web (requires Windows Live). Your audience can see your slides in high fidelity, even if they don’t have PowerPoint installed.

Think of this as a real time Slideshare feature, and perfect for collaborative meetings.

Device Access

Post your presentations online and then access, view, and edit them from the Web or your Windows phone. With PowerPoint 2010, you can get things done according to your schedule across multiple locations and devices.

• Microsoft PowerPoint Web App. Extend your PowerPoint experience to the Web and enjoy full-screen, high-quality viewing of our presentations. Store your presentations online and edit your work through the PowerPoint Web App when you’re away from your office, home, or school.

What is important to note here is that Office 2010 web apps are far richer in functionality that Google Docs and as we mentioned earlier, can be accessed via Facebook as well [Docs.com].

Other interesting features include the ability to work on multiple presentations/multiple monitors, a lot better image editing, better implementation of slide transition features etc makes PowerPoint 2010 a much better product than the earlier version.

Outlook 2010, the new offering from Microsoft Office 2010 is certainly a threat to a lot of companies (including Google) who have been selling online collaboration suite.

Here is a quick recap of top features in Outlook 2010 that really makes it enterprise friendly.

Key Features in Microsoft Outlook 2010

The key feature that takes Office to the next level is the launch of social connector.

Social Connector allows users to write emails while keeping track of their family, friends, and colleagues by viewing status updates and past communication history with the individual. When users view their emails a name, picture, and title will be available for the person they are contacting.

Inspired by Twitter/Facebook, Social Connector brings ‘real time activity stream’ of your contacts from social networks; though the current beta version only supports Sharepoint, LinkedIn and MySpace and will soon launch connectors for Facebook and Windows Live.

It’s a no-brainer that Outlook will eventually integrate with one’s in-house system (say SAP/CRM/HRMS implementation) and basic ACL (Access Control/LDAP) to enable organization to bring in a much inside view of ‘What’s going on?’.

Most of the other products (in enterprise collaboration space) have a broken view of this and startups in collaboration space have been building outlook plugins for the same. With the launch of this, expect an unrest among companies in enterprise collaboration space.

Initiate live conversations

By using Office Communicator, or your instant messaging application, Outlook 2010 provides presence and status information for those on your buddy or contact list. Available as a hoverlet, you can see your contact’s availability and then easily initiate a conversation directly through instant messaging.

Send SMS from Outlook 2010

Outlook 2010 is integrated with Office Mobile Service (OMS) or Exchange Server and one can easily send and receive text messages as well as receive notifications on your mobile device.

For example, you can receive an alert on your mobile device that an important e-mail message has arrived. You can also have Outlook calendar summaries sent to your mobile device.

You can configure settings depending on the geography and while this will cost a minimal amount, the trial period will be free [details here].

Voice Mail Previews

With Outlook 2010 and Exchange Server 2010, a voice-to-text preview of a recorded voice message is sent along with the voice mail recording directly to your inbox. You can access your messages virtually anywhere using your computer, Microsoft Outlook Mobile, or Microsoft Outlook Web App.

Split Message

Believe me, this is one of the most important feature and even Gmail should take a leaf from this. Simply put, Split message feature lets you split messages in a conversational views, ensuring that you reply to right people (with the right context).

Screenshot Tool

Outlook has an inbuilt screen capturing tool that  enables you to take screenshots, edit them (basic editing is enabled) and send them via email.

Other notable features include

• Improved ToDo bar – The new ToDo bars have date headers.
• Improved Calendar – Microsoft Outlook 2010 has a new feature called Schedule View that makes it easier to schedule time with your co-workers. Schedule View is a new horizontal layout for the Outlook calendar that displaysmany calendars at the same time

Is Outlook 2010 just about email messages? Not anymore.

Well, Microsoft is catching up with other office product suite and Outlook 2010 is surely an improvement over previous products. It is more closer to enterprise collaboration and is surely a case of worry to Google(s) of the world.

If you have been using the beta version, do share your review.

[Part of our fortnightly theme on Microsoft Office 2010 and Online Office Space. If you’d like to share your insights, send us an email: ashish at pluggd.in]

The service automatically will send your invoice to customers (you need to first buy zPost credit).

Inside the envelope, your customer will find a professionally-printed invoice that will reflect well on your business. In addition, we include a payment coupon that your customer can detach and put in the included return envelop along with her payment and mail back to you – blog

A very useful service that a lot of small businesses will avail. This also helps Zoho in creating a bigger brand and increase (potential) customer touchpoints.

Watch zPost Demo Video

What I liked about Smartupz is that it creates a landing page for your business i.e. a dynamic contact page which gathers information about your visiting customers, conversations all over the Social Web, and consolidates these information in a way that is easily index-able by search engines. Of course the data is rendered useful for the sales team for collaborative selling too. For example, you get the contact information for your customers aggregated at one place that is accessible by all members of your sales team straight from your existing website.

Smartupz has a very cool interface that simplifies the sales process by letting your team members manage requests and communicate both among themselves and with customers online. The emails are linked with relevant conversations between sales reps and the quotes could be created and sent immediately on the spot. The landing pages are customizable using a visual editor and typical landing page would look like this:

Smartupz is priced in standard SAAS format with plans ranging from USD 5 to USD 45 a month. Accounts are provided with analytics to track sales performance, conversion rate, reports show in-pipeline deals, closed deals and an API is made available for development of custom reports too. The functionality is accessible on smart phones & tablets too, which ensures that on-the-field sales teams are also roped within the system.

All in all, I found Smartupz quite neatly done and will definitely help you manage the complexity of the sales processes better.

Dear Pi readers, do give Smartupz a spin!

1. Create a document online on docs.com or on your desktop version of Office 2010. Save it online on Docs.com
2. When a doc is open, go to viewers >> edit. Choose the users you would like to share the doc with. They would be intimidated like any other FB update.
3. You can go to editors >> edit to invite collaborators on the doc.
4. Leave a comment or ‘Like’ as you do with any other update from your friends.
5. To set up a Docs tab on your Facebook home page, go to your profile page, click on the + symbol at the end of your Tabs header, type “Docs” and then select “Docs.”

The links on the official docs are broken. You can go here for more info. 

Unlike Google Docs and Zoho, Docs.com may not find the real office going users. Facebook being a non-work network we could expect a lot of teenagers sharing their homework online. But will that really be the case? The tool is in closed invite now and the sign up for waiting list is buggy so we will have to wait to see how smooth the flow is.

Will this be a redefining moment in online collaboration? We dont think so but MS has definitely put its $240 million investment to some use.

[Naman is a startup enthusiast and has worked with couple of Indian startups as Product Manager. He writes at The Inspire Blog]

The Google Apps Marketplace offers products and services designed for Google users, including installable apps that integrate directly with Google Apps. Installable apps are easy to use because they include single sign-on, Google’s universal navigation, and some even include features that integrate with your domain’s data.

Apps installation is easy – it takes 4 steps to install the app and there are apps across various categories – right from accounting/finance to productivity suite, project management etc.

This is a milestone for the online office space, as Google has the muscle power to bring all the existing competition [except MS] under its marketplace.

But what’s really lacking is the discovery of app. You do not go to app marketplace to look for apps – the whole experience has to be deeply embedded into the core product, i.e. Google Apps.

Few months back, Zoho too launched Zoho Apps marketplace [Zoho Launches Marketplace for Apps, Pokes Google] and this time, Google has upped the bar with its revenue sharing deal – Google will keep only 20% of the revenue.

Watch this intro video of Google Apps Marketplace

• Multiple Currency Support (with real time currency conversion)
• Automatic Invoice Scheduling
• Alerts & Reminders
• Late Fees Option
• Invoice Customization
• Report Generation
• Recurring Invoicing
• As many as 14 Payment Gateways (Including CC Avenue for India)
• Sending Invoices as PDF in Mail Attachment

Invoicera User Interface (click to enlarge)

Invoicera is targeted at Freelancers and SMEs. The pricing model is based on a monthly fee with cap on the number of clients and invoices. For the target market the pricing seems a little too steep. Though the international market should find takers but in the domestic market it will face quite a lot of friction at this price point. They should also look at a pricing model based on variable time frames.

The multiple payment gateway that Invoicera supports will surely act to its advantage, giving them a larger target base. These kind of tools do find a slow viral growth as every client that receives the invoice is also introduced to the service. Yet, marketing a SAAS tool for enterprise is a big challenge and takes more than a good product or pricing to close a sale. Also, Invoicera is in direct competition with Zoho Invoice that is available for less.

A 3 client 50 invoices plan is available for free trial so do give Inovicera a spin and share your views.

[Naman is a startup enthusiast and has worked with couple of Indian startups as Product Manager. He writes at The Inspire Blog]

Lets go back in time….

- People might not have been prepared to put their money with other people’s money when banking was established. Banking and online banking is mainstream now.

- People were probably afraid to get on an aircraft which weighed a few tones and promised to soar like a bird. Today, air travel is a given.

Back to the present.

Currently, we are witnessing one of the biggest shifts in enterprise software (software used for business) and as everything else, it comes with it’s own set of myths, mindsets and confusion. Here are a few I have experienced over the last few years from people who are still not ready to adopt online software for their business.

"My data is more secure with me than putting it on someone else’s server"

Your data is more secure at your vendor’s data center than your own internal network. Security is more than just about taking daily backups, maintaining uptime and setting up a firewall. It’s about password policies, encryption, intrusion detection, offsite backups, secure transmission, software updates, patching etc. If hosting or maintaining servers is not your core business then you are better off renting out software from a reputed vendor who understands all these things. This will ensure peace of mind in the long run.

"I don’t have control over my data or the software"

Well, don’t you put money in the bank and access it anytime you want it? The money is still yours but you rent out the bank’s services so that you don’t have to worry about storing and managing your money. Similarly, you need technology to stay competitive but you don’t necessarily have to own it anymore. This illusionary control is something that you will get over when you see the value the software will provide your business over time.

"SaaS is new & hyped"

If you are using Gmail or Hotmail then you are already using SaaS. Salesforce, PayCycle (now Intuit) and Taleo were all started in the late 90s and have millions of users. Plus, there are over 1200 SaaS vendors across 80 verticals on SaaS-Showplace.com – a well-known directory of SaaS vendors and product categories.

Look around. The Generation X and Y literally live on the Internet (think Facebook, Orkut, Myspace, Twitter, WordPress, Blogger, Youtube, Flickr etc.) and when they join the workforce, guess what they will be expecting? Easy to use, simple online business tools that are constantly in a state of evolution and don’t become obsolete.

"SaaS is difficult to customize"

If you need heavy customization then you probably should not go for SaaS. What’s happened in the past is that people have customized applications so much that they have now become bloated and unmanageable (even by the original vendor that developed it). Instead, why not choose an online application that is closest to what you want to accomplish and start using it? Over time the application will evolve – all good SaaS apps evolve on a month-to-month basis and even provide an API that you can build on.

"I have an IT team and SaaS is a threat"

In fact, online applications are a savior that can free up precious resources to work on strategic business objectives that affect your bottom-line. The key is to focus on the core and outsource what you really don’t need. Why not ask your network team if they would like to automate things that they do on a daily basis?

"SaaS is expensive in the long run"

It depends on what costs have you factored in. If you were to manage your own servers then you need to factor costs for running the server, bandwidth, security, encryption, personnel, upgrades, backups etc. SaaS vendors keep the software fresh and upgrades are mostly free of charge. On-premise software becomes stale and becomes ‘shelf-ware’ over time. Your business needs something that is always cutting-edge and evolving.

"Using SaaS requires a steep learning curve"

Did someone tell you how to navigate Facebook or setup a Google Apps account? Probably not and you did it, intuitively, all on your own. Similarly, SaaS apps are built to give the user a near hassle-free experience since they are judged every month (as opposed to the one time fee you pay for your software that you download or install on your computers). If a service I use fails to provide my team and me a positive experience I will stop trying it and move to the next best competitor. It’s as simple as that.

With SaaS’s cost effectiveness and ease of use, it makes great business sense to start leveraging them to automate various functions within the workplace. This is going to be the future of how software is going to be delivered and consumed so go ahead and give it a shot. There is nothing you can lose.

About the Author

Sahil Parikh is a web entrepreneur living in Mumbai, India. He’s the founder of DeskAway.com – an online project collaboration service for small businesses and teams.

Sahil has been involved with building stuff on the web since the last 9 years and when not in front of the computer, Sahil spends his time reading, playing golf and traveling to distant places.

Zoho Projects for Google Apps creates an integrated experience for Google Apps users that includes single sign-on, integration with Google Docs and Google Calendar plus the ability to embed Zoho Projects information directly inside iGoogle, Gmail and Google Sites.

One can also upload Google Docs documents to your project in Zoho Projects ensuring that your documents stored in Google Docs can be shared with all the members in your project (details).

What’s interesting is that Zoho projects is well integrated with Google calendar, so that one can track milestones/tasks/meetings etc from their GCal page.

Zoho earlier launched Google Apps signin integration and has been aggressive with it’s G-strategy (is there an over obsession)?
Watch the demo

Also see: Zoho takes on Salesforce..Launches ‘Zwitch to Zoho’

Recommended Read: Web based Project Management Software – THE Grand List

Today, Zoho has launched Google apps integration that will enable you to login to Zoho using Google apps credentials.

Essentially, Zoho will show ‘Google Apps’ sign-in option and once user enter their Apps domain name, Zoho will redirect the user to Google to sign-in using your Google Apps credentials. Once you authorize accounts.zoho.com, you’ll be logged in to Zoho directly (source).

Threat to Google?

While Google Apps is an online office suite, Zoho has smartly positioned itself as a IT department for SMBs. Applications like Zoho marketplace, Zoho Business suite, HRMS certainly makes Zoho a good ‘try out’ option.

Do products live upto expectations?

What’s your take?

Tata Indicom has partnered with HyperOffice to offer latter’s online collaboration tools to it’s subscriber base – and plans to deploy a private-labeled version of HyperOffice to its subscribers in the third quarter of 2009.

This is an interesting move as businesses/consumers’ most important touch point is telecom operators, and anything that comes along with the Internet connection has a higher chance of usage (push vs. pull).

What’s your take? Have Indian SMBs matured enough to move to SaaS offerings?

Related Read:

• Nivio, Airtel and Microsoft team up for Online PC
• SaaS companies in India [List]

Question to Zoho team – are you even looking at Indian market?

He offered repeatedly to acquire Zoho outright, which we rejected. I told him there is absolutely no fit between our companies, particularly with his business model and our business model. I told him there is just no cultural fit between our companies and such an acquisition would be miserable for both parties. Finally, he offered to let us integrate Zoho into AppExchange, provided we pull the plug on Zoho CRM. We told him that kind of pre-condition is totally unacceptable, and it also completely negates his claims of openness of their platform. Needless to say, we never did agree on the issue, and we dropped the integration effort. – Sridhar

Zwitch program enables any salesforce customer to migrate to Zoho and try out the service; and while Salesforce charges $65/user/month, Zoho is offering it’s CRM product for $12/user/month, a claimed saving of 80%.

Would be interesting to see how many SF customers migrate to Zoho? What’s your hunch?

Also see: Zoho pulls the “G” string – Now you can Import Google Docs in Zoho Writer

MS”s online standard suite is a set of messaging and collaboration solutions hosted by Microsoft, and consists of Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, Office Live Meeting, and Office Communications Online.

If you are a sysadmin and worried about managing user policies etc, the good news is that Microsoft Online Services work seamlessly with Microsoft Active Directory, so you can continue to manage user policies centrally and control which services are available to your existing users.

This is a big boost to SaaS players in India and MS’s entry will surely heat up the space, though it’s a different matter that most of the incumbent players in enterprise space have failed in their online/SaaS venture.

What’s your take?

Recommended Read: Microsoft teamed up with Nivio and Airtel for the Online PC | 100+ Indian colleges to Implement Google Apps

Read our detailed coverage of online office.

Today, Zoho has entered into the ‘Yammer/Twitter’ domain of live streaming (and lot more) and has launched a newer version of Zoho projects.

Zoho projects enables you to import your mpp files,keep projects organized and most importantly, help you collaborate with your team.

• The Project Stream keeps you up-to-date about the latest activities going on around your project
• Set your User Status to let your team members know what you’re working on (you can think of that like a private Twitter for your Project)
• Keep all your meetings, milestones and tasks organized in the shared calendar
• Store your files and documents in one place, keep track of the changes with the version history
• Discussions – interactive forums make everyone a part of the conversation – and keep important topics and decisions available for everyone to see
• Create team and project web pages with the integrated Wiki
• Always-on, embedded chat means you can chat with your entire team – or with only one person using just your browser. And it also keeps a log of what’s been said so you can refer back to past conversation. And you can also setup different ‘chat rooms’ – one for every topic you’re discussing. – more

Couple of enhancements are a sure welcome

• Timesheet will help you track time and is integrated with Zoho Invoice.
• Reports helps you track each team members performance against stated goal.

Like we said earlier, Zoho is competing to replace your IT department and is potentially a bigger play than Google.

Having said that, if you start using Zoho for your daily use (as a user, and not a blogger/critic), you will find frequent breaks that just hurts the user experience (for instance, I am unable to create a Zoho project at the time of writing this article) – there are too many open loops in the product, married with nearly wrong English.

If you are a daily use of Zoho, we would like to know your experience.

View this introductory demo of Zoho projects

Creately is an online tool to create diagrams like flowcharts/mind maps/Process flows/Org charts etc for free.

Creately is a very simplified version of Visio and unlike the existing desktop applications, product’s strong USP comes in the form of collaboration.

The product is loaded with several templates and that makes it easy for the users to get started with the system – there are inbuilt logic built in the components/objects as well.

Creately supports international keyboard/characters and one can also post their diagrams on Twitter/share with others (each diagram has a permalink).

At the same time, the product is in a state where it can become another visio – i.e. the propensity to become another cluttered diagram creation tool seems to be very high (how about contextual menus, folks?)

Creately is currently in closed beta, but one can apply for an access here.

More on online office

Zoho has launched an integrated mobile service (compatible with iPhone, Android, Blackberry, Windows Mobile and S60 Edition phones) that brings the Zoho apps under a common umbrella (and user experience) – via

The apps supported are

• Zoho Mail
• Zoho Calendar
• Zoho Writer
• Zoho Sheet
• Zoho Show
• Zoho Creator

The mobile app currently supports doc creation as well (text only) – integrated with Google gears for offline support (for iPhone only).

Here’s the slideshow on Zoho’s mobile integration:

In the coming years, Zoho will face stiff competition from Google as well as the Big Daddy, i.e. Microsoft (which is looking at online office as software + service model).
Inspite of all the compelling features, Zoho’s products haven’t gone too well with consumers – and it is a big hurdle for them to cross (it’s easy for one to say that they are targeting SMBs and not consumers, but you can’t really argue that in the world of clouds anymore)
What’s your opinion?
» Read our coverage/analysis of online office space

Recommended Read:

• Interview with Raju Vegasna of Zoho
• Interview with Sridhar Vembu, Founder of Zoho

Essentially, Live Presentations is available as a desktop software as well as browser-based service offering – both versions offer rich functionality to create, edit and collaborate on presentations and users can seamlessly switch from one platform to the other at any point of time.

Live Presentations Architecture

The desktop version offers full offline functionality – all changes made to documents when offline are automatically synced back to the server the next time the user goes online.

Live Presentations offers collaboration as well as integration with Flickr and Twitter (for both desktop as well as browser version). What really impressed me was the twitter integration – presenters can use Twitter as a backchannel to get feedback in a conference-type setting.

What’s missing? Bullets. As per Instacoll team, bullets facilitate creation of bad ppts (do you agree?) and hence no bullets in Live presentations!.

Have a look at the product demo here. What’s your opinion of Live presentations?

Customers are able to access Zoho cloud data using SQL on both other cloud applications as well as through traditional on-premises software.

At a high-level, Zoho CloudSQL serves as the bridge between the external application and the data stored inside Zoho. It receives the query in SQL, interpret it, delegates queries and aggregates results across the Zoho services.

CloudSQL is an interesting development, since customers can port their data to any other application, and is a move away from locking-in.

• Supports multiple SQL dialects. We support all the major (and even some not so major) ones: ANSI, Oracle, SQL Server, IBM DB2, MySQL, PostgreSQL and Informix.
• With our JDBC/ODBC drivers, developers can access data in the cloud just as easily as if it were stored in a local database. – blog

Force.com Sites gives customers the power to publish their Force.com data and applications to any Web site.

Think beyond CRM.  Build more apps.  Build better apps.  With less cost and less hassle.  Developers everywhere are using Force.com to build core business applications, like enterprise resource planning (ERP), human resource management (HRM) and supply chain management (SCM).  It’s the fastest way to get from idea to app.   It’s about more innovation and less infrastructure. It’s about running your business in the Cloud.

As somebody who has worked with SF team on product integration and also as a competition (with Siebel CRMOnDemand), let me say that this is something that’s very big. Force.com changes the entire notion of how enterprises look at integrating cloud services within their systems – from inside out to outside-in.

What’s your take on Force.com?

Microsoft recently launched it’s cloud platform, Azure and Marc Benioff says he doesn’t know how to pronounce Azure, and then adds ‘I don’t care’!

Is cloud getting crowded?

Unlike other SaaS providers like Google and Zoho, MS is playing the software+service game (and not software as a service)

And as we edit, organize and store media, the PC has quietly moved from our desks to our laps to our mobile phones and entertainment centers-taking the Web with it each step of the way.

Software-plus-Services is the next logical step in the evolution of computing.  It represents an industry shift toward a design approach that is neither exclusively software-centric nor browser-centric.  By deeply and genuinely combining the best aspects of software with the best aspects of cloud-based services, we can deliver more compelling solutions for consumers, developers and businesses – source

While Google pushes cloud computing via the browser route (to be more specific, Chrome), Microsoft will leverage it’s desktop footprint and will introduce applications that integrate with it’s Azure platform/livemesh.

Windows Azure is not software that companies will run on their own servers. It’s something new: a service that runs in Microsoft’s growing network of datacenters and provides the platform that helps companies respond to the realities of today’s business environment, and tomorrow’s. Windows Azure technologies are already finding their way into products such as Windows Server 2008 and System Center Virtual Machine Manager, enabling organizations and Microsoft partners to create their own cloud infrastructure. – Steve Ballmer

The challenge?

Call it a ‘wolf in a sheep’s cloth’ syndrome, most of the incumbent/enterprise players have failed at SaaS business owing to the huge sales margin that they are used to (by selling hosted products).

Changing the DNA of the entire engg/sales org is not an easy task – take a look at what happened with Siebel (and to a certain extent, Ariba) – the CRMOnDemand application lost out to Salesforce not because of technology, but because of the inherent DNA that prevailed in Siebel’s sales team – they were unable to identify the right customer base and right pricing (for instance, will you sell SaaS solution to deep-pocketed IBM? Or pitch enterprise CRM tool to them?)

Microsoft too will face the same issue, but the good news is that cloud is for real and we will see some real action from the company that matters most in office space!

What’s your take?

Catch the online office action.

Big blue has launched SaaS version of Lotus Notes Domino, it’s email collaboration software.

Lotus Notes Hosted Messaging includes hosted mailboxes and the Lotus Notes client – costs between $8 and $18 per user per month.

The hosted service has certain limitations like space constraint (1GB-per-user-mailbox) and the service doesn’t gel well with Notes apps and databases – but nevertheless, this is an important development in the world of online collaboration software.

Microsoft’s exchange service is priced @ $10 (per user per month) – more as a ‘software+service’ offering – i.e. on-premise + cloud computing.

Is Software as a Service more geared for adoption that Software plus Service model? What’s your take?

Image by Michael Kohn via Flickr

Zoho mail is stepping out of private beta and has integrated Google gears support enabling users to read mails offline.

Zoho Mail automatically detects your connectivity and switches to online/offline modes seamlessly. While offline, you can respond to your emails as you would normally. When you go back online these emails will be sent out from your Outbox.- blog

Zoho Mail offers following features:

• Configure multiple mail accounts to access all your personal and official mails from a single mail client.
• Choose your preferred way of organizing mails using hierarchical folder and/or flat labels.
• Mail conversations using Conversation View (i.e. threads).
• Import Contacts from your Gmail and Yahoo accounts.

Zoho’s tabbed interface is quite similar to Yahoo Mail

and offers few new features like:

• Setting Mail priority – though other email clients don’t support this feature, but is a much useful feature for businesses who are on Zoho.
• International Language support – Apart from UTF-8, zoho mail also supports EUC-JP, EUC-KR etc.

Feature request – please support MX records delegation, in order for SMBs to use it as a self-service product.

Interesting to note how a competitor is using Google’s APIs in a better fashion that Google itself!

Recommended Read: Review of Zoho Mail

Zoho Marketplace provides a growing catalog of business applications that users can try and purchase. If you like an application you can buy it from the developer (some applications are even free) and ‘Install’ it in your Zoho account – source

What’s interesting is that unlike other service marketplace/exchange, Zoho is not charging any transactional fee to customers or developers (of course, focus for Zoho is to increase the adoption of their office suite).

Zoho has also released major updates to Creator 3, and now enables custom HTML pages, layout customization and stateless forms.

What’s BIG about this all? Watch this interesting video – Zoho has ‘poked’ KooKle (resembles somebody? ) for the first time:

Guess there is more to come!