Cloud and Device Office Productivity Offerings

["Dennis E. Hamilton" <de...@acm.org>]

I just saw this comparison on ZDNet: <http://www.zdnet.com/pictures/does-microsoft-offer-the-best-android-office-suite-android-office-app-showdown/>.

That led me to look into WPS Office.  It is cross-platform and apparently focused on interoperability with Microsoft Office binary formats (.doc, .ppt, and .xls although I see that OOXML and PDF are also supported in current releases) although it has its own proprietary format.  It is already internationalized: <http://www.wps.com/it/ios/> (demonstrating my favorite second language).  The software is produced by Zhuhai Kingsoft Office Software Co., Ltd. in China and appears to be very suitable in the China-Japan-Korea sphere, having arisen from Chinese-language word-processing software originally introduced on DOS in 1988 (and unrelated to Microsoft Works), <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WPS_Office>.

There is a Linux version, but it is not moving along very quickly it seems, although Android and iOS are featured.  There is no version for my Kindle model so I must make do taking the Windows desktop version for test drives.

Why is this interesting?

 1. It demonstrates how rapidly productivity applications, and interoperable ones, are moving into the devices and cloud space.

 2. It gives us a benchmark with regard to the level of interoperability that might be important for the conversion capabilities of Corinthia to achieve.  I think that matters for Corinthia to provide an appealing open-source contribution that is usable in the devices and cloud space.  It indicates what the level of expectation in the various ecosystems is going to be.

 3. It also helps us look at exactly what is it that differentiates Corinthia apart from being an Apache Project.  What itch are we scratching and how does that relate to what our public will be and how they are served.

I don't have answers about this.  I think the questions are useful.


 -- Dennis E. Hamilton
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