News Articles
EContent | April 2008
Moving Your Office Online
By Ron Miller
Glide Business (Launches May 28, 2008)
Main Applications:word processor, spreadsheet, database, project manager, email, calendar, chat, and more.
Glide Business provides an online operating environment with all of the tools your company needs to work and share applications and files across your desktop and mobile environments. Of all the tools in this overview,it comes the closest to fulfilling KyleMcNabbs(Forrester Research)vision of a tool that can help people organize their entire digital lives, but it requires that an organization use Glides tools to do it. Whether theyd be willing to commit completely to Glide is still open to question.
Glide includes the standard word processor, spreadsheet, and presentation program. However,unlike Google, it lets users access applications whether they are online or off.Glide uses a separate synchronizing tool to ensure that content is updated whenever users connect and to provide a way to move content between the desktop and online environments. In addition, there is a version of Glide that can be installed locally on a hard drive. The local version offers some additional features like pivot tables in spreadsheets not found in the online counterparts.Glide costs $10 per user per year along with a scaling annual fee for storage ranging from $20 for 10GB up to $500 for 400GB.
Enterprise customers can install Glide Business behind the firewalls on their own servers or let Glide host the service. Regardless of the method,administrators can control access to applications and files and track which files have been used, where they went, and who sent them, which provides solid security control. Whats more, administrators can set up security at the project level and set the security levels at whatever level they wish, on an individual basis. Administrators should also like the fact that Glide is platform-independent and that there is a version of the synchronizing tool for Windows, Mac, and Linux.
Glide Business includes integrated chat, email, and sharing available from tabs within every Glide document. Users can set detailed attachment rights such as allowing such as allowing a certain number of views, setting an expiration date for the file, and so forth. Glide also handles multimedia files well, enabling users to attach and control multimedia files regardless of format, and recipients can always play them within the defined rights by clicking a link in the email.Another differentiator for Glide is the way it seamlessly links the desktop and mobile environments, letting users access files and share files and functions from a mobile device or desktop computer, yet it still gives administrators the same back-end control of content regardless of which device users employ to access it.
Like Google Apps, users dont get a perfect conversion or have all of the functions found in Microsoft Office. According to Transmedia CEO Donald Leka, the company aimed for 70% of the functionality of Excel. He admits that if you are using advanced accounting features, you wont find every tool you need. However, he thinks what Glide does provide should satisfy most users.
Glide Business provides control, collaboration, and management across desktop and mobile environments on a variety of platforms and devices. It offers control over files andsophisticated synchronization, but it will need to prove to enterprise customers that it will be around for the long haul.