The company claims that Live Documents lets users create, edit and share documents with the edits being automatically synchronized with all other copies of the documents. To use the document offline users have to download a plug-in and also have Microsoft Office suite installed on their machines. However, the Instacoll expects to launch the desktop version of the software in next six months, which would be operating system neutral.
The concept of Live documents is similar to Zoho, which was launched in October 2005 and Google Apps, launched in February 2007. IBM also announced Lotus Symphony suite in September 2007 for creating, editing, and sharing word processing documents, spreadsheets, and other documents.
Live Documents provides a sophisticated productivity and collaboration solution for both sets of users – people who want to completely avoid Microsoft Office applications and those who wish to continue working completely within these tools – and the real power of our solution is that it lets both sets of users work well with each other rather than create two silos working independently, said Kaushal Cavale, chief operating officer at InstaColl.
According to the company, the software also has security features and access rights for every document stored online. Users can control the digital rights of all documents to enable read, write, copy, or print.
Aricent (formerly Flextronics) has signed up for Live Documents for 7,000 users. Instacoll will charge a license fee for enterprises per user and has priced at approximately $50 per author license per year or $10 a month. Businesses can use a hosted version, which is managed by Instacoll, or host it on their own servers. The software is free for individual use up to 100MB.
Source: ComputerWire daily updates
