If you have not seen what Zoho has to offer with its suite of on line applications you really should go check them out. They are going head to head with Google to become your on line application of choice, and it is looking a lot like David and Goliath.

However, Sridhar Vembu, CEO of AdventNet, the company behind Zoho services, doesn’t see it as an all-out battle. “That would imply that there can be only one winner, which I don’t agree with. Business is not like sports in that respect. It is perfectly possible to have a profitable, growing business without `winning’ the market in the sense of being number one,” he told Business Line in an exclusive interview. Source: The Hindu Business Line

Zoho has a suit of applications that can be run on line across multiple platforms, and in many cases got those apps up and running long before Google had their system up and running. Zoho is basically focusing in careating applications that can be run anywhere by anyone at any time as long as they are on the web. Google is doing roughly the same thing just in a different way.

Both companies see that having those documents on line so that they can be synched across multiple platforms is also something that is going to need to be done to make it the killer application. If someone can be writing a document on line on one PC then go home to finish the document without having to do anything other than be on line that would be a great way of approaching the usability factor of on line applications.

The other problem is going to be privacy of the documents and the document stream, otherwise those documents are going to be fairly open to folks if there is an issue later on down the road, either legal issues like discovery, or illegal activities like a data breach. While the data breach scenario is remote, it is still a possibility.

If you want to see some cool tech and see what is available other than Google apps, then Zoho is the place to check out.