One of the major products we’re seeing as part of Web 2.0 is the Online Office. Zoho and Google are building full suites, and countless other companies are providing one or other component. Despite some impressive features, the online office suites aren’t integrated at the moment. Users of Microsoft Office are used to integration of the programs, from OLE (Object Link Embedding) to UI consistency to the ability to write emails in Word and send them with Outlook. However, neither the Google or Zoho office suite has any integration on the same scale as Microsoft Office.

That’s not to say that Zoho and Google don’t recognise the importance of integrating their products, or that they aren’t working to achieve that. They are, but in very different ways. I thought I’d take a look at how they’re going about achieving integration, since I am a strong believer that if Zoho or Google integrates better and faster than the other, they will win the online office war.

There are a few opportunities for integration, and I’ll be looking at them in a series of posts. First up is the ‘Online Drive’, which I’ll look at tomorrow.

This post is part of the series of Online Office integration. To read the rest of the series, click here.