Zoho Builds Cloud Apps on SharePoint

In its effort to overtake Google in the cloud productivity apps space, Zoho has turned to the company Google Apps is targeting in the first place: Microsoft. Specifically, Zoho is taking advantage of Microsoft's SharePoint collaboration technologies with its Zoho Office for SharePoint.

SharePoint has been a big success for Microsoft in the collaboration field, but when it comes to cloud productivity apps, Google is the company making the big moves these days with a clear eye on migrating users from Microsoft Office to Google Apps. Zoho is hoping that by integrating with SharePoint, it can stop being second fiddle to Google.

[ In addition to taking on Microsoft and Google, Zoho is taking on Salesforce.com with its Zoho Marketplace for business apps. ]

According to Zoho, these are the four major functionalities Zoho Office for SharePoint offers:

• Create new documents and save them to SharePoint in MS Office formats
• View existing documents within SharePoint using Zoho Apps (Zoho Writer, Sheet & Show)
• Edit existing documents with Zoho Apps and save them back to SharePoint
• Collaborative editing based on SharePoint's sharing permissions

Essentially, Zoho Office for SharePoint brings the flexibility of cloud-based productivity apps -- including the ability to use both Microsoft Office and Zoho formats -- to SharePoint and leverages SharePoint to bring collaboration to Zoho's apps.

Your move, Google.