Software + Services: MS Office Web Apps

Software as a Service or SaaS as it is commonly known has been a buzzword for

quite a while now. Let's, however put this into a real-world situation and see

whether the SaaS model actually is enough for working. Let us take, for example

, different executives who travel on a regular basis and work on documents,

spreadsheets and presentations all the time — not just from office or home, but

also in the car, flight, airport and other places. They also need maximum

flexibility in working with these files — in formatting, layout, printing,

emailing and even viewing.

The SaaS model gives the solution of storing everything up in the cloud

always. However, looking at the situation above, it is easy to realize that an

offline model is as important too. This is where the Office Web Apps come in.

The Office Web Apps are an offering from Microsoft that lets you work with the

different Office document formats online in the cloud. You have create, view and

edit ability for all the major formats — Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote.

Not only that, it assures 100% fidelity of document formatting when working in

the online model and a 2-way synchronization of changes from online to offline

or vice-versa.

MS Office 2010 already has the ability built in where you can simply save the

file to the free SkyDrive service. This allows the document to be available in

both modes and anytime you are away from your computer and still want access to

the file, simply fire up a browser and head over to SkyDrive where not only can

you download the file to the machine if you want, but also view, edit and save

it without any loss in formatting or features.

Save to Cloud directly from within Office 2010.

An Excel file open in Office Web App within SkyDrive. Note the ribbon and the Pivot Table rendering.	A high fidelity view of a Word file with images and other formatting.

Microsoft also allows corporates to host their private documents within

SharePoint 2010 and enable the Office Web Apps feature within this. Employees of

an organization can then access the company SharePoint portal to pick up any

document, make changes online, collaborate with any of their colleagues and save

the document back with no loss of fidelity. They can of course at anytime pick

up the document and for more advanced features use the offline Office

applications to edit them and upload them back.

A presentation with note, animation and graphics.

Adding styles to an image in the Office Web Apps.

The best part about the Office Live Web Apps is that they're free for anyone

to use - as long as they have a Windows Live account and sign up to SkyDrive.

With the new release of Windows Live apps (Wave 4 — currently in public beta)

you also get a new Windows Live Sync tool. This tool allows you to designate

folders on your machine that you would like to sync up to and from SkyDrive

automatically. Once done, you simply save the file locally into your hard disk

and the tool syncs it to the cloud. You can access this file when you are away

from your computer, make changes directly to it online and when your computer is

back up, it will sync up those changes from the cloud back to your machine. This

is a feature that becomes extremely useful as you start using it since you can

now access all your files from anywhere and make changes without worrying up the

copy you have going out of sync. You also get the full advantage of high

fidelity views and edits when online and the full power of the Office suite when

in offline mode.

Same Excel worksheet open in Google Docs. No Pivot Table support or formatting.	Same Excel worksheet open in Google Docs. No Pivot Table support or formatting.

All formatting lost over at Google Docs.

The Office Live Web Apps is available now for free for end-users and as part

of SharePoint 2010 for companies. This makes S+S a potential combination for

enterprises and users alike. Check out the screenshots to know more.