Web Based Office Applications

Do you dream of being able to work from a beach in Tahiti or a cozy condo in the Swiss Alps? While it might be hard to sneak away from your persistent assistant or your overbearing boss, utilizing web-based office applications, such as Google Apps and Zoho, can get you away from your desk while also providing a bit of environmental relief by eliminating the need for packaging, cardboard, shrink wrap, and disks.

Zoho is a suite of online applications and services that are free for personal use. They offer office applications, including a word processor, spreadsheets, presentation tool, note taker, and even a document management system. They also offer communication applications such as a web-based email server, chat, collaboration, and project management features.

Zoho strives to provide their customers with the most comprehensive, feature-rich set of applications available anywhere. So, in addition to the applications that appeal to individuals, they also offer Z Business, which aggregates a collection of Zoho applications into a single dashboard.  The dashboard allows business customers replace Zoho with their own company logo for customized branding, and offers integration with a host of third-party services.Their customer relationship management (CRM) applications integrate sales, marketing, customer support and service and inventory control so that a company’s inventory is organized into a single business system. They also offer services specific for intranet, web-conferencing, database creation, invoicing, project management, recruiting, and report creation.

Google Apps also offers a free suite of online applications targeted at small businesses that enables employees to collaborate without having to host their own expensive software systems. Their suite of applications including Gmail, Google Talk, and Google Calendar, promote communication between authorized collaborators. When utilizing the premium version, your email storage space is increased, no longer do you have to worry about annoying advertisements and your service is guaranteed to be available 99.9% of the time.

Included with the Google Apps are Google Docs and Spreadsheets–programs that offer word processing and spreadsheet creation while adding the benefit of real time collaboration. Although these applications do not offer the advanced capabilities of Word or Excel, the ability for multiple users to edit together in real-time is invaluable and cuts down on the amount of time wasted emailing documents back and forth.

These online applications do not replace working offline, but they do strive to replace the ever-popular Microsoft Office suite of software. They were created to enhance the way we currently work, and by utilizing online web-based applications you can save money, increase productivity and inspire collaboration.

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