Hotmail co-founder launches online office suite
Hotmail co-founder Sabeer Bhatia is placing his bets on an online office productivity suite that aims to compete with similar offerings from Microsoft and Google.
Instant Collaboration Software Technologies (InstaColl), a Bangalore company
co-founded by Bhatia, unveiled Live
Documents, an online service that allows users to access and
edit documents using a Web browser, and collaborate and share documents with
others.
The service works with any browser that supports Adobe Systems' Flash and runs
on any operating system, said Sumanth Raghavendra, chief executive officer of
InstaColl.
Online documents can also be worked with off-line, using an optional desktop
client application that "wraps around" Microsoft Office to give it
online collaboration capabilities, Raghavendra said. Users can work on a document
in Office when off-line, and the document will be updated in Live Documents
the next time the user goes online, the company said.
The hosted service, which is available as a limited technology preview at www.live-documents.com,
will be free for individuals to use, but corporate users will have to pay. Corporate
users can sign up for the hosted service or buy a license to run the software
on a server at their own premises, Raghavendra said.
Live Documents uses Adobes' Flash and Flex technologies. Raghavendra argued
that this gives users a better experience than Google's hosted applications,
which he derided as a stripped-down version of Microsoft Office.
"Even power-users of Microsoft Office can use our service," he said.
Microsoft will not sacrifice its packaged desktop software business by offering
a full online productivity suite, he said, which creates an opportunity for
companies like InstaColl.
Bhatia, who shot to prominence after selling Hotmail to Microsoft for a reported
US$400 million in 1997, told reporters in Bangalore that the new application
addresses a bigger market opportunity than Hotmail.
InstaColl is targeting both the office productivity market, which it estimates
to be $20 billion this year, and the market for document management and collaboration
software.
The decision to offer the service free for personal use was prompted by the
need to popularize it, Raghavendra said.
The application currently supports Microsoft Office on the desktop for users
who want to work off-line, but will also support OpenOffice.org, an open-source
office suite, in a few months. InstaColl also plans to launch by that time its
own desktop client for working off-line.
IDG News Service
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