A Comparison of Cloud Based Office Productivity Suites

The growth of internet and cloud infrastructure has transformed the way businesses operate, especially in the field of application software. Earlier (pre-cloud days), individuals / businesses were required to buy their software licenses, install the software, manage it and run it for as long as they found it usable with support from the developer. Now, technology enables us to use software that we need on subscription (pay per use, monthly, annual) basis. Users need not install or maintain any IT infrastructure, all of it is managed by the provider. Users access the software through the internet (via a browser / mobile app). This delivery model is called Software as a Service (SaaS). In this paper, we discuss briefly about evolution of office productivity suites, how the market is moving towards a SaaS model and then compare products of the top 3 vendors (Google’s Apps, Microsoft’s Office 365 and Zoho’s Docs) across a variety of parameters.