Microsoft recently released the newest version of its Office suite of programs, which included Microsoft Office Web Apps on Skydrive. Users can log in with their free Live accounts and create and edit Word 2010, PowerPoint 2010, OneNote 2010, and Excel 2010 documents in their browsers, and store them in the cloud on the Skydrive site.
You will not need an Office 2010 desktop license to use the apps, but the Skydrive version does integrate with desktop versions of Office 2007 and 2010. There is also a beta version of Office Web Apps that can be deployed on-premise as part of Sharepoint.
Features of the new Web Apps include:
- Drag and drop uploading from desktop to browser.
- Real-time, multi-user collaborative document editing.
- Version history.
- Searching across documents, including documents shared by other users.
- Read-only access from mobile phones.
The applications run on multiple browsers, but Microsoft is not officially supporting Google’s Chrome browser. However, it appears that users have been able to create and save documents from Chrome on a Windows 7 desktop.
Google, as well as several other vendors (e.g. ZoHo), have offered Web-based applications for some time. Office Web Apps feels quite similar, and are at least as functional as Google Apps. The on-premise option, desktop integration, and the familiar features and interface of Microsoft Office, make Office Web Apps a strong competitor against Google Apps and ZoHo.
