Zoho, the online office suite which we’ve reported quite a lot on has just added a new feature – integration with OmniDrive.

Huw reported a while back that Zoho were not planning to release their own ‘Zoho Drive’ application:

Raju confirms in the comments [of this post] that Drive will not now be released. I have mixed feelings on this. In some ways it helps them maintain the focus, and maybe Zoho/Adventnet isn’t the right company to do it. However, I liked the premise of it, and it is radically different from what the storage companies are interested in at the present.

Well, it seems that the OmniDrive integration announcement will fill this gap, and I’ve taken a quick look at the new integration features between OmniDrive and the Zoho suite.

More after the jump.

Straight away, going to File > New > Word document in Omnidrive’s very Vista-reminiscent interface opens a new window, where Zoho Writer opens up and starts editing the document.

Similarly, I’m told that once you’ve uploaded a Word document into your Omnidrive account, double-clicking it does the same, opening a Zoho Writer window. Unfortunately, Omnidrive didn’t seem to like my browser setup and I couldn’t upload a file (the desktop client wouldn’t work as well, as I’m on Linux) so I couldn’t test that.

Interestingly, however, there is no reverse functionality – documents created in Omnidrive won’t show up on your Zoho Writer documents list (and your Writer documents don’t automatically get moved into an Omnidrive account either). In fact, from what I can work out, the Omnidrive portion of the application is separate from the Zoho account – so you don’t need to be signed up with Zoho to use the embedded Writer.

Having a centralised storage solution has been one of the big things ‘yet to come’ to online office suites, and this announcement does put Zoho in a very favourable position, and now significantly ahead of the competition in the form of Google Docs & Spreadsheets.

What I am slightly disappointed about is the fact that the storage is so focused around Omnidrive, and not Zoho. While the current setup is brilliant if you’re an Omnidrive user, if you’re not (like I was until I signed up to test this) it’s not as enticing. Obviously, part of this deal between Adventnet and Omnidrive will be the cross-pollination of both services by each other, so it makes sense that Zoho push more people to get Omnidrive accounts and vice-versa.

Don’t get me wrong – this is an awesome feature and is a valiant (and successful, in my opinion) attempt to yet again reduce the number of reasons why you shouldn’t use an online office suite.

Zoho have thrown down the gauntlet again, this time with the help of Omnidrive, and it will be very interesting to see what Google and Zoho’s other competitors in this space can do.