OX Document

Open-Xchange, the German developer company of the open source software for business productivity started by the former participants of a command OpenOffice provided in the spring of 2013 a cloud service of OX Documents which is positioned as the potential competitor Office 365 and Google Docs.

The new online service of work with documents working according to the SaaS model meanwhile offers only one product - OX Text, the text editor available from the browser. Within a year developers are going to start a spreadsheet processor and the editor of the presentations, the technical director of the company Rich Landsman reported.^[1]

The editor of OX Text gives native opportunities of editing both the Microsoft Office 2007 (.docx) files, and the documents OpenOffice/LibreOffice (.odt). Unlike many other browser and desktop editors, OX Text is able to open, edit and save office documents based on XML without data loss and formatting, developers state. Besides, it has different tools for optimization of document flow and joint work.

The code of the OX Documents interface is completely created by means of HTML 5 that allows to use all opportunities of local data storage as online, and offline, Landsman told. Besides, the 100% compatibility with HTML 5 makes new "cloud Office" available from any device connected to the Internet whether it be the mobile device or the stationary PC. "The most important feature of OX Documents - adaptive design thanks to which applications arrange and change the type under the size of the screen and type of the device", - he added.

OX Documents is a new opportunity within OX App Suite, the cloud Open-Xchange portal including management tools e-mail and applications, the calendar and tools for work with social networks. According to Landsman, with App Suite and OX Documents the company tries to create "single window" which "allows the user to bring all the applications together".

Since 2005 the Open-Xchange company also delivers the cloud applicaion for message exchange and joint work carrying the name Open-Xchange Server. The application created as an open alternative of Microsoft Exchange is used now by about 70 million clients from 3,500 state departments, educational institutions and private companies.

With implementation of the office suite the linking of Open-Xchange, OX App Suite and OX Documents can begin to be considered as a new alternative to the main players of the market of cloud productivity - Microsoft Office 365 and Google Apps. According to the research conducted by Forrester Research, both Microsoft, and Google offer the clients the products implementing four basic needs of joint work at office: e-mail, means for team working, message exchange in real time and social networks.

"The difference in a set of products reflects the unique nature of each of offers and difference of opinion of vendors. Office 365 shows fragile balance between attempts of Microsoft to implement model of online services and at the same time to save possibilities of desktop software which already services the extensive customer base. Google Apps personifies the convinced belief of search giant from Mountain View to the world of web services in which the majority of business applications also numerous mobile platforms "are ground" under work in the browser", - Forrester writes.

The products Open-Xchange giving similar opportunities and in the same way based in "cloud", in turn, personify methods of community Open Source - for example, the company adopted the accelerated cycle of release of new releases well-known thanks to Canonical. The company promises to release new versions of OX Documents each several months.

Open-Xchange first of all is guided by the European market of business productivity from where it already gains more than 66% of the income and also to the USA and Asia. In the corporate sector the user base OX is generally made by the technology companies: hosting providers, suppliers of cable television, mobile operators, software distributors and also OEM-manufacturing of the hardware and software.

While 70 million active users - the essential customer base, are only a small market share of the cloud office software where Office 365 is the actual leader. At the end of January, 2013 Microsoft business division (Business Division) which is engaged in development of Office 365 reported about "historically record" quantity of the prolonged subscriptions and also on outstanding success in a public sector.

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