I see, you’re talking about Zoho Virtual Office, which has been renamed Zoho Mail recently. This is the only piece of the Zoho collection that can be deployed on premise, and as far as I can tell, it works well with IE 6 and FireFox. The fact that it does not work with IE 7 is due to the fact that IE 7 does not work at all. The problem does not come from Zoho, it comes from Microsoft. And I am not the only one thinking so. The National Institute of Standards and Technologies (NIST) recently banned not only IE 7, but also Vista and Office 2007, mainly for security reasons. So Francis, I love standards as much as you do, and I believe in the need for secure software as much as you do, but please, do not give us Microsoft as an example of standards-based and secure software. Please.

Best regards
 -Ismael

I’ve been looking into Microsoft’s Office Live Premium, not extensively yet. It is an on-demand service that comes with domain registration, 50 e-mail accounts with 2 GB of storage each, office suite including project management, on-line collaboration with audio and video soon, CRM, ECM, web hosting, tools to build web sites & workflow, and application hosting, with a free accounting package for small business. All of these are at a cost of $39.95 a month. This is a heck of lot cheaper than subscribing to many independent services, which one needs to spend time to integrate! Moreover, there is a fallback position when a user cannot go online: s/he can use Microsoft’s Office Suite, or even OpenOffice.org, to work on documents.

Microsoft has been working with Nortel in providing hardware and software for Voice over IP and Internet teleconferencing. I have a friend, a professional engineer, who used to work for Nortel as Corporate Network Manager. Nortel tests all its products internally before it sells the equipments to the customers.

Don’t get me wrong, I am not against Office 2.0, Web 2.0, or Enterprise 2.0. Personally, I rather like them. They have the potential to improve software-based systems. I, however, would not recommend a product or service to my clients when it is half baked (e.g. BPMS with no EDI capabilities), or doesn’t conform to de jure standards (e.g. not C2 certifiable) such as: ISO, IEEE, ANSI, EIA, and what not!

With all due respect, this makes no sense at all. Zoho’s applications were never designed to run offline, and claiming that they don’t does not mean anything. It’s like saying that Google’s search engine is no good when working offline. I’m sorry, but this is complete non-sense.

-Ismael

Thanks for the tip. It’s already filed under the Group Manager category.

Best regards
 -Ismael

That was exactly what I did.

I don’t take anyone’s word on how fantastic a package runs, be it online or offline!

Best regards
 -Francis

If you are inclined, please take a look at BlueTie. I believe it would provide a good addition to your Database (Alexa 29,708, Google 5). BlueTie has a competitive set of features to many of the products you listed, and a compelling price offer. Integration with a CRM is not yet there, but we do have the ability to have emails archived to CD and sent to you.

Regards
 -Jeremy

Then you know something nobody else does.

I’m sure the Zoho folks will be happy to learn their applications run offline.

I have been using Zoho for more than a year now, and I have never experienced such a thing, neither on Microsoft Windows nor on Mac OS X. Sometimes, the web browser might freeze, but this is true for virtually any website that makes heavy use of JavaScript. Other than that, I think you are painting a picture that is not a faithful depiction of the reality.

Best regards
 -Ismael

You’re right, the term is a little bit confusing, but I could not find anything better. Thing is, Joyent and Zoho Virtual Office provide a lot of the tools that come standard with an Operating System, hence the choice of terminology.

I might change it down the road though.

Best regards
 -Ismael

I’m surprised at what you classify as “Operating System”. I don’t consider Joyent or Zoho Virtual Office an OS, just like in the desktop world Outlook isn’t an OS either.