| OpenOffice.org goes online with SAAS version |
Dec. 12, 2007
 Do you really like OpenOffice.org as your office suite? Would you like to be able to use it on any computer with an Internet connection? If you answered yes to both those questions, you'll be interested in Ulteo's beta of Ulteo Online Desktop, which allows the use of OpenOffice.org over the Internet as SAAS (software as a service).
Ulteo is a new company that's working towards developing an online desktop that combines office functionality, courtesy of the open-source OpenOffice.org 2.3 office suite, and common Internet services such as e-mail and Web browsing.
The French company was founded by Gael Duval. Duval is well known in Linux circles as the founder of Mandrake, now Mandriva, Linux. Duval was fired from Mandriva in 2006 after disagreeing with its management over the company's direction. He immediately started work on his next project, Ulteo.
Ulteo, the software, began life as a Debian/Ubuntu-based Linux distribution. Duval and his partners then decided to transform the project into a Web-based office suite that incorporates elements of both SAAS and a thin-client offering.
In an interview, Duval explained, "Our ultimate goal is to provide any existing application, including open-source apps, Windows, AJAX [Asynchronous JavaScript and XML] apps, [and] Flash apps, through the Ulteo service, without any installation or maintenance headache. Just click and use."
In this beta version, users can use OpenOffice.org 2.3 with a browser. According to the company, the user does not need to download or install OpenOffice.org. So long as a user has a Web browser with JavaScript support and has a Sun JRE (Java Runtime Environment) 1.4 or higher plug-in enabled, the program should work. Ulteo stated that the beta has been successfully tested with the Firefox 1.5+, Internet Explorer 6/IE7 and Safari browsers and on Windows, Mac OS and Linux desktops. The one caveat, the company said, is that Ubuntu Linux can not substitute any JRE for the Sun Java plug-in.
OpenOffice.org executives were enthusiastic about Ulteo's offerings. John McCreesh, OpenOffice.org's marketing project lead, said in a statement, "This is an interesting development for people who want to try out OpenOffice.org without having to download and install the software. If you're wondering how OpenOffice.org compares to your current office software, this is a convenient way to see OpenOffice.org in action in a browser on your desktop."
The Ulteo version includes all of OpenOffice.org 2.3's functionality. For example, it can read and write older, non-Open XML, Microsoft Office file formats, defaults to using the ODF (Open Document Format) standard and can be used to create Adobe PDF documents.
Ulteo also claimed that it adds collaboration service to OpenOffice.org. Specifically, Ulteo enables multiple users to work on a shared document. Florian Effenberger, OpenOffice.org's marketing project co-lead, said in a statement, "You even can work together on documents online and collaborate with others. This especially is an interesting option for trainers and workgroups."
Of course, there are other companies, notably Google with Google Apps, which already offer this kind of functionality. Duval said in an interview, "Our goal is not to compete against Google Apps or others such as Zoho." Instead, he said, Ulteo recognizes, "We are all Google users, and so we will continue to use some Google apps and others under Ulteo."
The company is now inviting 15,000 new beta testers to give its online version of OpenOffice.org a try. This offer is only open to users from Europe and North America at this time. Later, the company will extend its beta test to users in Asia. Would-be beta testers can register to test Ulteo Online Desktop at the Ulteo beta page.
Jay Lyman, an enterprise software analyst with The 451 Group, said in an interview that he thinks Ulteo is "interesting simply because it's coming from Gael Duval and that should lend some credibility and buzz to it. It could also be good for OpenOffice to be offered [and] shared in another way."
Lyman continued, "However, it will be challenging for Ulteo's effort to succeed, for a few reasons. First, stability and features are among the biggest hurdles for OpenOffice. This offering does not speed things up that much and points out how desktop use doesn't always map well to SAAS functionality. There is really not much, if any, performance or stability increase in this case.
"It's a highly competitive space with MS Office, StarOffice, Google, IBM's Symphony and others both established and entering. OpenOffice, as well as others, is already free to download, so that represents additional competition as well," Lyman said. "Obviously, there are benefits such as lack of necessity to install and memory use. We'll see if those outweigh the challenges listed above," he concluded.
-- Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols
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