Online Office and Online Storage
Posted on August 16, 2006
4 Comments
Not that I expected to be alone, but it’s nice to see a couple other folks agree with me. Or kind of agree with me if you hold your head just right and squint a little… A couple days ago I mentioned that it would sure be nice if online “office” applications would consider integrating with an online storage vendor. Less worry, more integration, blah blah blah.
Rich G agreed with me in principle in a post he made last night, but he’s going the USB drive route. Which I guess makes sense, but that’s one more thing for me to lose (and let’s not tell my wife how often I lose them! ). I can see where he’s coming from though and he doesn’t have to worry about the online app disappearing overnight.
This morning I read an entry by Nik Cubrilovic (associated with Omnidrive, an online storage vendor) kind of talking in the same direction. Omnidrive has exposed APIs aimed at, among other things, the online application vendors. Would be nice to see some of them take them up on this (assuming the financials are sensible for all involved, including the end-user!).
If you are building any type of web application that makes use of user content or storage then it makes total sense to use Omnidrive.
Well, I had earlier suggested box.net since they let me use their product (*cough* Hey Omnidrive, lemme play!) but Omnidrive sure seems to be pondering this problem!
Now, to be sure, I’m not nearly bold enough to say one online storage vendor is better than the other. Or even suggest one over another. But I’d sure like to encourage the Zohos and Googles of the world (and ThinkFree and everyone else doing or pondering building an online office) to figure out a handful of online storage vendors’ APIs. And then offer ‘em as part of your product. Figure out some revenue sharing deals. Hell, I’d pay one of you for the privilege of storing my online office data in an online storage repository (I’m assuming whomever I pay is sharing with the other…). To use real names: if Zoho hooks up with Omnidrive and offers Omnidrive storage as part of their suite — for extra — I’d likely pay Zoho, with the assumption that there’s some sharing going on behind the scenes.
Seems rational… am I missing something though?
Tags: box.net, office, omnidrive, onlineoffice, web2.0
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4 Responses to “Online Office and Online Storage”
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The ones to watch IMO for the first adoption of large amounts of storage are the google products. Gmail is already over 2gig of storage and google’s got writely and their spreadsheet thing going on. We’ve all seen the G-drive program that turns a gmail account into a virtual HD so all the bits are there already, google just needs to put them together first.
The first person to do it will have a headstart on the rest.
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