The Hindu Business Line : Your office follows you!

Web-based collaboration tools enable us to set up an office that is up 24x7 and accessible anywhere and everywhere. eWorld takes a look at these cyber workplaces that go by the name of office 2.0

The world has been talking about paperless offices; I've moved to an office without walls," an acquaintance quipped talking about the way he worked entirely out of cybercafés. The year was 2003 and Internet outlets offering broadband connectivity were just coming up.

What this man, a freelance public relations person who made his living as a consultant to a few out-of-town companies, did was simple. Armed with a laptop loaded with office productivity software, he stationed himself at a cybercafé. His clients sent across their requests on e-mail and our man worked the briefs on his laptop. Once done, he sent across the files back on e-mail as attachments, using a thumb drive to transfer the work to the cybercafe's computer.

What he meant that day was that the broadband offered him the speed to send across large files quickly; the Web e-mail played the role of a communication centre, a single window through which he could interact with multiple people; and he was saving himself the money and trouble of setting up an office and a network. But he needed the laptop! That is where all his productive work was being done. No, he could not do without it.

Looking back from 2007, we may chuckle at his idea of carrying software to an office on the Web. There are programs available on the Web for small offices and enterprises that can give you the keys to your own ready-made office. Networked and loaded with all the necessary digital office supplies and software, these are essentially aimed at organisations that can't or are reluctant to invest in large IT systems and solutions. It's an office domain that's 24/7, that can house up to a couple of hundred people from different geographical locations, that follows you and your colleagues wherever you go, that doesn't require you to spend money on system maintenance or software that we are talking about. The best part is, it comes free of cost, if you want it that way.

Monikered office 2.0, there are many companies that offer this concept of office-anytime-anywhere and new ones are coming up every day. A lot of them charge a small fee for the service but almost all of them offer trial versions so you can know what you're getting.

The two big and most visible players, Microsoft Office Live and Google Apps offer basic versions that are free of cost. At the time of writing, Microsoft Office Live hasn't gone, well, live, in India. Let's take a look at Google apps and what they have on offer on the free version:

First, you need to have a Google account to sign in to Google Apps. If you're a user of Gmail or any of their free services, that username and password will do to sign-in. If you're new to Google world, you can set up one for yourself, free of cost. Once you sign in, you're asked to choose a name for your domain. If you already have a domain registered in your company's name from a third party, you can use that name and Google will configure it to work with Google Apps. There were reports on the Web that if you already have a Googlepages (Google's free web-hosting service) account, you may use that subdomain name for this purpose, though an attempt made to the effect was summarily rejected by Google Apps.

Total strangers to the world of domains may choose to buy a domain name and Google will provide you one through Godaddy.com. This will cost you $10 every year, but that's the only expenditure you'll incur with Google Apps.

Once you're done with the shopping, it is time to work. Start adding the names of your colleagues and employees and each one will be given a unique user account. Up to 200 user accounts can be created in the Google apps standard edition. You can also give administrator privileges to your chosen colleagues to manage the office in your absence. Send across the individual login information to your people and you're ready to collaborate as an office and using the Apps productivity tools.

The clutch of applications that Google has bundled under the Apps tag is enough to run the IT side of an office of a few dozen people. They all have Google's familiar easy-to-use look and are available under a single control panel. Two of the applications, email and chat, are already well-adopted by anybody who uses the Net.

Web Pages

This is where you can create a project site or simple Web pages for your product or the services of your company. You may also upload files that you want displayed on the pages but the total space reserved for your uploaded files on Google servers is limited to 100MB. You can create a maximum of 500 pages, adequate even for the most information-conscious of small businesses.

The Page Manager is a simple interface that can be used by anybody who's handled a word processor. It is WYSIWYG and supports full undo/redo and preview functionalities. If you are still intimidated, the `help' button runs you through the application, provides troubleshooting tips and provides an FAQ.

Calendar

One important part of offices that collaborate on the Net is the calendar. As more and more people get involved in a project, it becomes increasingly difficult to synchronise calls and meetings and note who's free or who's on leave. Google Apps calendar does a nice job keeping everybody's schedules up to date. You can easily track assigned tasks and note progress. One can also choose the amount of information that can be shared within the calendar for others to see (One can just say that one's busy or one can also give further information on why one is busy).

Docs and Spreadsheets

Well, the key part of collaboration. Long threads of e-mail get built up when a document goes back and forth among multiple recipients. With everybody commenting on it and suggesting changes, one ends up not knowing what the latest version of the document is. Google Apps' docs and Spreadsheets function as the common library where everybody posts their documents. One can review others' work, comment on and edit documents without any confusion about which is the current version of the work.

If you want to take advantage of some powerful functionality of a desktop-based word processor or accounting software, you may create the document in your chosen application, upload it to Google Docs and Spreadsheets and download it back to your desktop after the necessary peer review.

All the documents, as indeed all your data, gets stored on Google servers in encrypted form. You have a word processor, an accounting tool to create spreadsheets and presentation maker in this suite.

E-mail

The most popular of Google applications is bundled into Google Apps. Since most users of the Internet are already used to e-mail, there is no need to elaborate on the utility of the application. Your users can access e-mail on your company's domain (http://mail.yourdomainname.com) using their usernames and passwords. One can also create simple user lists to mail multiple people at one go. You may also choose to have your company's own logo in place of Google's logo on outgoing mail.

One thing that jars is the limitation of the mail box to 2GB. When Google is allowing 200 user accounts on a single ticket of Google Apps, it averages out to a very small individual mail space of 10 MB per head. Surely the company that has doled out 2+GB personal mailboxes on Gmail can do better on this front.

Chat

Well, what better way of keeping your group in touch. Without going into the functionality of a chat program, let's talk about the little office secretary that gets thrown in with the tool. The chats are indexed and are fully searchable, so you never lose the minutes of your last online meeting. One criticism against Google Apps is that one becomes bonded to connectivity. Your beloved office won't function when, say, you're on an aeroplane; because you don't have an Internet connection. The point the critics miss is that Office 2.0 applications are primarily aimed at collaborative efforts. If everybody in an office is on an aeroplane at the same time, they may only be celebrating a collective holiday after completing a successful project. Ahem.

Overall, Google apps is a highly functional sheaf of tools for online collaboration and productivity. Small businesses that don't have resources to set up their own IT department may see an opportunity in it. It's in `beta' state, which means we may expect additions and improvements in future. So will do, of course, the emerging competition. Some of them have already thrown in ideas such as Web-conferencing and design tools into their packages.

Back in the mid-90s, at the onset of the Internet, there were attempts made at a similar concept called a Network Computer. It did not take off. Nor did it make much sense at that time with the costs involved in acquiring a computer and the low bandwidths on which the data travelled. A decade later, with the spread of the Web and with broadband connectivity and in the time of Web-based user interfaces, the idea is making its reappearance as Office 2.0. It's here to stay. And it will evolve.

Others in the arena

Here are a few more of the players in the Office 2.0 arena. Though all of them offer Web-based office productivity and collaboration packages, they vary in finer details. Most of them have Word Processor, Spreadsheet, Presentation and File Sharing as standard offerings. Check them out:

Joyent: Basic plan at $15 per month. http://www.joyent.com/

Zoho: Free for open-source projects. http://www.zoho.com/

Basecamp: Basic plan at $12 per month, free trial. http://www.basecamphq.com/

Central Desktop: Basic plan at $25 per month, free plan available but limited to 25mb among 5 members. http://www.centraldesktop.com/

Web office: Basic plan at 59.95per month, free trial. http://www.weboffice.com/

Thinkfree Online:Free. http://www.thinkfree.com/

Peepel: Free. www.peepel.com

rkanth@thehindu.co.in