Office 365 is not Microsoft’s first attempt at offering this kind of service; it has previously offered hosted Exchange and SharePoint services with BPOS (Business Productivity Online Services). But by including Office Web Apps in Office 365, the company now has a much more rounded product that enables users to do their work anywhere, on any device, and to easily collaborate with others.

Office 365 vs. Google Apps for Business

One of Office 365′s main advantages over Google Apps is the huge existing installed user base of Office products. Office is entrenched in the majority of businesses worldwide, and Office 365 offers an easy pathway for those users to migrate to cloud collaboration while using familiar tools. Office 365 also has a greater range of features than Google Apps, incorporating office productivity (Office and Office Web Apps), collaboration and intranet tools (SharePoint Online), email and calendars (Exchange Online) and instant messaging and web conferencing (Lync Online).

Unlike some previous Microsoft releases, Office 365 works cross-platform, so it can be accessed equally via Mac and PC and on mobile devices — although there are reports that mobile access from some devices is limited. Office Web Apps, in particular, is an impressive suite of products, and while they aren’t complete cloud-based replacements for the desktop Office apps — they don’t offer the full range of functionality that desktop apps do — Microsoft obviously invested a lot of effort in making the user experience very similar. The interface is familiar, and documents look identical in Office Web Apps and in the desktop applications. By enabling seamless round-trip working between Office Web Apps and Office desktop applications, Office 365 can also work when users are offline, something that can’t be said of Google Apps.

Of course, Google believes that its product is superior. On Monday, in a post titled “365 reasons to consider Google Apps” on the official Google Enterprise blog, Google Apps Product Manager Shan Sinha aimed a few barbs at Office 365, saying that it is designed for usage by individuals, not by teams; that its pricing is complex; and that Office 365 doesn’t have proven cloud reliability, while Google Apps has a record of 99.9 percent uptime. Some of Sinha’s points are debatable: Office 365 does enable co-editing and collaboration, for example, and Microsoft has plenty of experience in offering cloud-based services, even if Office 365 itself is new.

Easy migration to cloud productivity for existing Office users

With its higher price point, Office 365 might not tempt existing corporate users of Google Apps for Business away, particularly as migrating between the two services is unlikely to be straightforward. However, that’s probably not the market that Microsoft is aiming at. Rather, it wants to keep hold of the huge numbers of business customers with existing investments in the Office product line. For them, Office 365 is a well-designed product that offers an easy migration route to cloud-based office productivity at a reasonable price point with products that will feel very familiar to their users. I think that will make Office 365 a compelling proposition for many business customers, in particular smaller businesses that would like to offer their employees the ability to work and collaborate remotely using familiar Microsoft tools but don’t want to have to make an upfront investment in, and then maintain, their own SharePoint and Exchange servers.

Office 365 is available on a number of different plans, starting at around $6 per user per month for small businesses with less than 25 users; enterprise customers have access to plans including dedicated support. For comparison, Google Apps for Business costs around $4 per month.

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Primadesk is a web app that wants to be a kind of desktop file manager for the cloud. By integrating with a variety of  cloud storage providers, it allows users to access and manage all of their documents through a single interface. Simply being able to view all of your documents in one place is handy, but the company has now added some new features for the app,  such as comprehensive document search capabilities and the ability to copy documents between services using drag-and-drop, that make it much more useful.

When you click on a document to open it, Primadesk actually opens a new browser tab, automatically signs in to the appropriate service, and then takes you to the document. While it’s not quite as seamless or as fast as using, say, Finder on OSX or Explorer on Windows, it does provide a simple and convenient way to search for, and take action on, content that’s stored across many different cloud services. And unlike Joukuu or Gladinet, which are Windows apps that provide similar “cloud file manager” functionality, Primadesk is web-based, and so works cross-platform and on mobile devices.

As well as document management, Primadesk can back up documents using Amazon’s S3 cloud storage, manage photos stored on Picasa, Flickr, Facebook and other services, and can also offer a unified inbox that can monitor emails from several different accounts.

Primadesk is currently in beta and is free. After launch, the product will likely move to a freemium model, possibly charging for the backup features. The company also plans to make money by charging OEM license fees for the use of its technology.

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Here is a list of five basic categories of tools all remote workers should have at the ready, and a variety of options to consider for each category.

Document Collaboration and Workspaces

There is a bit of a blur between virtual workspace and project management tools. These tools emphasize collaboration:

1. ideapi. Recently reviewed by Simon, this is a simple online tool for creating documents and collaborating on discrete sections of the documents.

2. Glasscubes. I’ve been using virtual workspace Glasscubes for a while now. Here’s my latest post taking a fresh look at the app.

3. Binfire. A free solution that lets you “manage projects by adding members, creating tasks and milestones, and assigning responsibility.” Here’s what else Amber has to say about Binfire.

4. Hyperoffice. A collaborative suite bundling email and communication, project management, database management and group meetings. Reviewed here by Amber.

Project/Task/People Management

Some of these tools also offer collaboration features, but they are more focused on managing tasks and people and getting things done efficiently.

5. Huddle. Many moons ago, we reviewed Huddle, and the team collaboration space is still going strong.

6. Cohuman. Delegate, assign and prioritize tasks with others for free. It even integrates into Google Apps. Simon published a screencast about this app.

7. Teamly. A collaboration tool with an emphasis on priorities, as Thursday explained in her initial review.

8. ProjectTurf. A collaboration app for running a project including briefs and time cards. Thursday reviewed it here.

9. Zcope. Simon felt this combined project management and collaboration tool had a lot of potential. It has slightly more advanced project management features than many of its competitors.

10. Mavenlink. This SaaS app neatly integrates project management, collaboration and invoicing. I reviewed it recently.

11. Microproject. Simple,  online project management for the smaller team. Here’s our review.

12. Wrike. We’ve covered Wrike several times, including most recently when the company added mobile apps to its project management and collaboration solution.

Desktop Sharing/Presentation/Web Meeting Tools

GoToMeeting is one of the leaders in the desktop sharing/web meeting space  (did you see the announcement of its Skype integration?), but there is an array of other useful remote presentation tools out there:

13. iMeet. Elegantly combines video and audio calls with document sharing. I reviewed it in March.

14. join.me. A  no-registration, free screen sharing app that fills a gap now that DimDim is now defunct. We’ve praised it here on WWD before, including announcing its iPhone app.

15. yaM. An app to streamline the process of holding meetings including planning, scheduling and note taking. See our review.

16. Zipcast. Slideshare’s quick presentation tool adding video and chat to your slideshows for public (free) or private (fee) presentations. Mathew reviewed it here.

17. CrunchConnect. Charles recently reviewed this web conferencing solution with an emphasis on sales.

18. FuzeMeeting. A fee-based video conferencing solution with collaboration features.

19. Yugma. Free and fee-based Web video conferencing with desktop sharing.

20. Zoho Meeting. Free for one-to-one video call meetings, or starting at $12/month for up to five participants.

File Storage/Sharing/Syncing

Giving the entire virtual team access to files – especially big ones – without having to email them back and forth is critical for remote work processes.

21. Dropbox. Store and share files in the cloud securely, and get access to them from your mobile device. Ryan covered the latest version of Dropbox late last year.

22. Box.net. An enterprise-friendly file sharing and collaboration, reviewed most recently by us here.

23. SugarSync.We’ve written about this file sharing and backup solution before including most recently about new features for its iOS app.

Miscellaneous Useful Cloud-Based Tools

A couple of online tools that help you do things that previously required pricey desktop software.

24. Diagram.ly. Simon recently reviewed this easy-to-use site for creating flow charts and other diagrams.

25. Tom’s Planner. A Gantt chart-based planning tool, with easy drag-and-drop functionality; it’s now iPhone and iPad compatible.

What are some of your must-have tools for remote work?

Image courtesy stock.xchng user spekulator

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Zoho, a provider of an extensive suite of 26 web applications, many of which we’ve written about previously, is now offering a bookkeeping and accounting system called Zoho Books. It will compete with online business accounting systems like LessAccounting and QuickBooks Online.

I was given a preview of the app, and the folks at Zoho that I talked to take great pride in operating their company using their own products. Unfortunately, I didn’t get as much of a chance to explore the product as I would have liked, but another blog announced Zoho Books prematurely, and Zoho had to take the site down until today.

I was impressed with what I was able to see, however. Zoho Books is intended for businesspeople who may not have accounting backgrounds, but it includes the features we’ve come to expect from accounting software, including functions to manage customer, invoice, banking and expense data. Users can generate estimates, quotes and invoices in multiple currencies, all of which can be customized, include company logos, and be sent electronically or by postal mail. Its systems for generating reports, automating recurring invoices and sending out payment reminders should be useful for many businesses.

The new service is a natural extension of existing products Zoho Invoice and Zoho CRM. Not surprisingly, Zoho Books integrates well with the existing contacts modules, and the service makes it easy to import and export data. Zoho has preset systems for importing information from other major accounting programs, and Zoho support will assist you in importing data from other sources.

Zoho Books also includes some nice additions, including a function allowing accountants and financial advisorts to collaborate with business owners in real time, and a system for letting customers pay online using Authorize.net, Google Checkout, or PayPal for Business.

Even though the Google Apps suite competes with Zoho, the new app joins several other Zoho applications that are available in the Google Apps Marketplace.

A video tour and a free 30-day trial of Zoho Books are available, and Zoho is offering two free months for those signing up for the new service. Zoho Books is priced starting at $24/month or $240/year, which includes access for two users. Additional users may be added for $5/user/month. Combination packages will be available for those who are already using other Zoho products; pricing has not yet been set.

How do you manage accounting for your business?

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There are also new advanced options on Zoho Show’s “Publish” menu for sizing embedded presentations, which should prove welcome if you are wanting to integrate Zoho Show presentations on your blog or web site.

Zoho has also improved support for Google Chrome. Previously, if you were a Chrome user you could only view Zoho Show presentations, but now you can have full access to all of its features.

Zoho and its web office applications may not get the headlines like Google Apps does, but its attention to usability and features like those in this update make them a player to watch in the web office market.

Have you tried out the newly-updated Zoho Show?

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All of the tools covered here centralize the data, and allow visitors to see the feedback that’s been shared already, thus avoiding the headaches involved with dealing with duplicate entries. They also gives everyone an at-a-glance overview of the things that others are thinking and feeling. They benefit your public relations and give your customers a platform to communicate with your firm: a win-win scenario.

Obviously, these tools also give your customers a way to vent and release frustrations. While some companies don’t like to see or hear anything negative about their organization, giving your users and consumers a way to talk to you  — and each another –  is a major plus in the long run. It shows everyone your level of confidence in what you do and signifies a level of commitment to customer satisfaction. Today, consumers are all web-savvy and expect to be able to communicate with an organization and its community.

Here are several services for establishing a customer care center in the cloud for your brand. They’re all easy to set up, and in most cases provide a free package so you can test drive them to see if they have the functionality you need.

GetSatisfaction. I’ll start with the two “gold standard” apps that compete in this space: GetSatisfaction and UserVoice. In a nutshell, GetSatisfaction excels at letting you communicate with your users/customers. You can give status updates on your service, answer questions and provide a useful Frequently Asked Questions list. It also provides your community with a forum-like service to help one another with problems they’re experiencing. GetSatisfaction has different premium plans that allow you to host this service on your own web site, while there’s also a GetSatisfaction-hosted basic free plan, which lets you see how it all works.

UserVoice also lets your users/customers report problems and ask questions, but it particularly excels at letting them submit ideas for new features. Each user gets a limited amount of votes so they have to pick and choose which ideas/suggestions they like the most.

UserVoice also provides a free basic plan for one forum, and recently removed usage limits on all accounts in favor of a “fair usage” limit. This means if your web site has less than 10M pageviews a month, then you’ll have unlimited usage.

Google Moderator is a free way to create a forum where your users can vote on the features they most want to see for your product or service. It works similarly to UserVoice but there’s no voting limits for users. For example, here’s one that was created to track ideas and suggestions for Google Buzz features: How to Fix Google Buzz.

Zoho Discussions is Zoho’s customer feedback solution that works very much Google Moderator. You can track ideas and suggestions on how to improve your business/product or service as well as provide answers to problems. It also have multiple plans, including a basic free plan that allows up to two forums.

makefive is the most unusual solution in this roundup, because its primary function is to create and share lists of anything you can imagine. The reason why I’m suggesting this service is because your users can vote on the items in these lists and, best of all, they can even add new items to the lists. So, for example, you could create a Most Wanted Google Buzz Features list, and let people vote on existing ideas and even add their own ideas.

So there’s my five free ways to get customer feedback in a hurry. What tools do you use to get customer feedback? Please give us your feedback in the comments.

Photo by martin schmid on Photoxpress

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If you don’t already have a Zoho account, then you can sign up with your Facebook ID.

If you already have a Zoho account, you can connect your Zoho apps to your Facebook account by linking them in your account preferences:

While this is good news for the 400 million-plus Facebook users out there, I’m left wondering at the continued lack of support for other popular sign-in options, such as Twitter and (more importantly) OpenID. I hope that they will be added soon.

Does Facebook Connect support make Zoho a more attractive option for you?

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The Google Apps version of Google Groups looks much like the public version of Groups that can be used by anyone. It has a plain but functional interface. However, groups created through Google Apps can be branded with an organization’s logo, and can be administered through the Google Apps dashboard to, for example, make Groups visible only to those with email addresses from the organization.

This new feature is not available in the free Standard Edition of Google Apps. To get access to Groups, you must purchase Google Apps Premier Edition, which costs $50 per user per year (a free 30-day trial is available). Groups are also available to users of Google Apps Education Edition, which, despite the name, is available to any registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization in the U.S., as well as to schools. The Premier Edition also offers video hosting through Google Video, technical support, uptime guarantees, email archiving, and other features.

Do you use Google Apps? Will the addition of Groups enhance your collaboration abilities?

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Zoho CRM, Zoho Mail and Zoho Docs all get new abilities to interact with and use documents from Google Docs, which should be welcome news for anyone wanting to try out the Zoho alternative without either starting from scratch or going through an arduous migration process with their existing library of docs.

Zoho CRM

Attach files directly from your associated Google Docs account to Leads, Accounts, and Cases within Zoho CRM. All you have to do is authenticate using your Google credentials when prompted, and voila, your Docs should appear for you to choose from, in addition to your Zoho Docs and files on your desktop.

Zoho Mail

Adding an attachment when you’re composing an email is as easy as clicking on the little arrow next to the “Attach” link, and selecting Google Docs from the list of sources. If you haven’t done so already, Zoho will send you to Google to authenticate, and then your files will appear in a list with checkboxes next to them so you can select multiple attachments at a time. Zoho also allows you to filter your Docs, so that you can view only text, spreadsheet, or presentation files.

Zoho Docs and Projects

The same interface is used to get documents directly from your Google Docs account to both Zoho Docs and Projects, although you might want to note that with Zoho Docs, uploading directly from Google is supported only in the dashboard view. Trying to do so from the dedicated Docs window only allows you to import from Google Docs files you’ve downloaded to your desktop.

I’ve always been a Google user myself, but upon revisiting Zoho’s offerings for the purposes of this piece, I find myself wondering why. I’m not a Gmail or Google Calendar guy, and short of forthcoming integration with Google Wave, which I’m not crazy about anyway, there’s really no reason I should stick with Google when the competition is clearly much more obliging. For now, I’m going to test the Zoho waters and see how things turn out.

Does Google Docs integration give you a reason to give Zoho a try?

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This could place even organizations with well developed telecommuting programs in a challenging position, because a major virus outbreak may mean that their remote worker needs exceed their current capacity.

On the flip side, there are organizations that are far from telecommuting-friendly, which face even more challenges because they aren’t set up for remote working. In order to keep their business running in such a crisis they are going to need to buy or build an infrastructure to meet a new model of working.

At WebWorkerDaily, we get a chance to review some of the best office productivity, social media, online collaboration, project management, and Web 2.0 tools that in a worst case scenario — like a pandemic outbreak — can help an organization maintain some semblance of operations and communications, even though its employees and contractors are working from home during the crisis.

Perhaps your organization already has a well-honed telecommuting policy, however it is prudent to look for chinks in your telecommuting plans before the worst case scenario happens. Here is a look at some tools and services you can use to keep business operations running.

Office Suites
While Microsoft Office is probably your corporate standard, an extreme scenario like a pandemic outbreak could place your newly minted web workers on their home PCs or on a limited number of organization owned notebook PCs — there might not be enough Office licenses to cope with this scenario. This means you may need to consider web office solutions to make up the shortfall. Good choices include:

• Google Apps is a good choice for augmenting your corporate standard Office suite, even though it is not as feature-rich. There are fee-based and free versions available.

• Zoho Business is another ready solution, with a wider variety of applications that Google Apps.

• Simon and I recently covered the impending rollout of  Office Web Apps. While it isn’t available yet, the model it promises is ideal for a scenario like this, because it can offer users remote access to their important Microsoft Office files with a familiar interface.

Web office suites can help you keep your work accessible online, which is especially handy if all your workers don’t have remote access to your corporate network.

Social Media
Whether or not your organization has embraced social media behind the firewall, suddenly becoming a home-based organization means that employees are largely cut off from each other. Social networking tools can help them stay in touch with each other and the organization as a whole.

Some corporate-grade social media tools that might fit the bill include:

• Socialtext, a corporate social networking and collaboration tool that we’ve covered previously.
• Yammer, a Twitter clone, is another option for injecting social media into your organizational communications (see our previous coverage).

Each solution has fee-based and free versions.

Project Management

Putting your project management tools online is a prudent move, even before a crisis — but it could become a necessity in light of maintaining corporate operations in the midst of an H1N1 outbreak. However, Microsoft Project maintains its crown as the most popular — albeit mostly desktop-bound — corporate project management solution. Here are some good online project management tools:

• Basecamp is a the most well-known of all of the online PM tools  — we’ve written about it many times previously.
• Zoho Projects is an economical and innovative project management solution that Doriano previously covered for WWD.
• Charles reviewed Team Effect which garnered some mixed comments but is worthy a trial.
• PBWorks (formerly PBWiki) is another online project management option and according to Simon’s review it is definitely worth considering

Each of these solutions have fee-based and free versions.

Instant Messaging
Keeping your team in touch with each other even if they are all stuck at home is vital. If your organization isn’t already using instant messaging, then you need to consider it as part of your contingency plan.

Some instant messaging solutions you should consider include:

• Open source clients like Pidgin and Adium which let you encrypt chat sessions over commercial IM networks including AIM, GTalk, Windows Live, and Yahoo.
• Microsoft Office Communications Server also offers web-based access to its IM client. If your organization is running it, take steps to ensure your staff has access to it from home.

Web Conferencing & Collaboration
Today’s web conferencing and collaboration tools are ideal for keeping your team working together even though they’re not all working from the same office. Here are some options for web conferencing:

• Acrobat.com includes ConnectNow. Thursday covered Acrobat.com coming out of beta. It has free and fee-based versions and includes online collaboration features.
• Dimdim, which we’ve covered before, is an excellent low-cost teleconferencing tool
• Simon covered the beta launch of Team Apart, a free online collaboration tool that offers white board, video conferencing, and file sharing. Depending on the progress of the beta, it might be worth considering.

Crises and Web Working
Whether you are building out or just augmenting your communications infrastructure in light of the H1N1 threat, I recommend checking out these  applications now and not on the eve of a crisis. You should also make sure that employees know how to use these applications and how to access them well in advance of having to actually implement your crisis plan..

How is your organization preparing to continue operations during an H1N1 virus outbreak?

Image by mzacha from stock.xchng.

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