Open Source fans will be interested to hear that a web suite of tools based on OpenOffice is nearing launch.
A rival to the likes of Google Docs, the company behind ZoooS Office says it will offer fast online access to 95 per cent of the functionality of OpenOffice. The price for a basic 10 user licence is $999 (£562), which includes server installation support and a limited post-implementation support service.
Running in Java, ZoooS Office translates the OpenOffice code into browser language, with a variety of plug-ins and widgets for Firefox, Opera and other browsers to allow online and offline access to documents scheduled for later this year. Porting the software to Internet Explorer is not expected before summer 2009.
ZoooS is hoping to woo existing Microsoft Office users on price while at the same time attracting users of free or very low cost packages such as Google Docs or Zoho with the breadth of features available within OpenOffice.
The business benefit of such web-enabled tools are manifold; from simply letting a diverse team of people in different locations edit the same document simultaneously, creating documents to share online to enabling instant access to a range of documents and data when out of the office.
“ZoooS Office looks exactly like OpenOffice.org 3.0, using the same icons, dialogs, help text, everything to eliminate the learning curve,” said Hisham El-Emam, CEO of ZoooS LLC. “Many companies want to access their files from any location and any device, but they don’t want to store confidential files in the cloud. Companies can run ZoooS Office locally to maintain complete control over their files while still providing local and remote access from PCs, laptops, mobile devices, and even game consoles.”
Public availability of ZoooS Office is scheduled for the fourth quarter of 2008. Initially, ZoooS will deliver the Mozilla UXLRunner version, a Firefox plug-in, an Opera widget, and an intranet server. ZoooS will follow up with a Vista gadget and Internet Explorer support in the first half of 2009.
