This entry was posted on Monday, October 1st, 2007 at 6:26 pm and is filed under Microsoft. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
The software maker is announcing Office Live Workspace, a free online tool for viewing, sharing and storing–but not editing–Office documents online. (Its existing Office Live efforts will be rebranded as Office Live Small Business.) It’s not quite ready–starting Monday customers will be able to put in their name to be part of a beta testing program expected to begin later this year.
Still, the effort is a recognition that competition is heating up in the productivity arena, an area that large rivals had basically ceded to Microsoft a few years ago. In addition to Google’s effort, which as of earlier this month also includes presentation software, IBM announced its free Lotus Symphony productivity software, which prompted 100,000 downloads in its first week of availability.
Adobe, meanwhile, on Monday is expected to announce it has acquired Virtual Ubiquity, a start-up that has built a Web-based word processor, called Buzzword, using Adobe’s Flash and AIR technologies. Adobe is also introducing a service, code-named Share, that allows people to share and store documents via the Web. Full Article.