Few recent technological achievements have changed society as much as the development of the World Wide Web. Today, we think nothing of using the Web to send and receive e-mail messages, go shopping, make travel reservations, play games, and research just about any topic that can be imagined. Old computers are finding new lives, not as recycled scrap metal, but as Internet access points that continue to provide significant functionality to users.

Businesses have also been tapping the power of the World Wide Web, as they find that it can be easier, cheaper, and better to use Web-based services for some tasks that have traditionally been managed with local software. Salesforce.com has become a compelling demonstration of how a Web-based application can provide a powerful (and more cost-effective) solution for many business development professionals across many industries—even in companies that traditionally have had strong internal sales channel resources. Within the legal community, litigation support professionals increasingly recommend Web-based discovery document repositories that offer rapid scalability, extensive analytical functionality, and 24/7 technical support—while also outperforming most traditional litigation support software installed inside law firms. Outsourced discovery document hosting isn't just more convenient than managing the project on internal information technology infrastructure; it often provides greater functionality and gives legal teams a substantive edge over opponents who are using less powerful analytical solutions.

One final frontier for Web-based applications, however, has been the core word-processing and office productivity software that is loaded on practically every personal computer in the world. These are applications that must be available to users night and day, regardless of location. Data files created by these mission-critical applications must also be readily accessible and secure against both intentional and accidental intruders. Faced with these and other requirements, it's small wonder that Microsoft® Office remains one of the most popular software programs in the world.

Over the past few years, however, Web-based word-processing, spreadsheet, and PowerPoint-style presentation software has attracted increasing attention and an increasingly large and vocal user community. Though Google Docs dominates news coverage of Web-based office suites at the moment, at least a dozen different Web-based word-processing programs are available, as are an equal number of online spreadsheet programs, many of them with surprisingly rich feature sets.

Why is Web-based office productivity software gaining traction now? Users are initially attracted to Web-based productivity suites for one basic reason: they're free. Google Docs and other competing online suites require nothing more than user registration, and they don't require elaborate and error-prone software installation. However, users quickly discover that these are fully featured applications that read and save documents in several popular formats, including Microsoft Office (.DOC and .XLS), OpenOffice, PDF, and HTML. For many, these programs prove more than powerful enough to serve all their document creation needs, especially those (like Google Docs) that also have an offline access mode for when an Internet connection isn't available.

Perhaps a bit counterintuitively, Web-based applications have also become increasingly attractive because they may meet mission-critical criteria better than traditional locally loaded software. Web-based solutions permit a user to access work product regardless of location and computer, so it's no longer necessary to load proprietary documents and information on a laptop computer that could easily get lost or stolen. Equally important, online document storage associated with Web-based applications also makes it easy to share documents with colleagues and clients. Unlike internally hosted document management systems—and even corporate and law firm extranets—users can easily share documents with others, all of whom can then access the files online from any location. No elaborate network configuration or security dance is required.

IT departments are also finding that Web-based applications offer some distinct advantages. First, other than standard Web browser plug-ins like Java and Flash, these programs require no installation on a computer—minimizing IT maintenance requirements. Second, far fewer security patches and updates—the bane of so many users and IT professionals—are required when only the computer operating system and browser must be kept current.

It's also increasingly difficult to find locations that lack Internet access. The growing popularity of affordable cellular modems for laptop computers and growing availability of Internet connectivity even when cruising at 35,000 feet inside a commercial airliner have eroded already weakening fears that materials stored online will be unavailable at critical times. Further, in addition to offline access, most Web-based office suites permit users to access their files from any Web-enabled device, including not only other computers, but also nontraditional devices such as mobile Internet devices and cell phones.

Of course, online applications aren't perfect. Organizations with sensitive information continue to be concerned about third party data storage that they do not control and for which a physical location is unknown. Large collections of information are the most attractive targets for hackers and corporate espionage, and even the best-managed data centers run some risk of intrusion and compromise. Corporate records managers also have some legitimate concerns that storing work product outside corporate servers may make it more difficult to enforce an organization's document retention plans, since no single life-cycle management tool can presently be applied to internal and external data repositories.

Conclusion

At least two of the strongest proponents of Web-based applications are certain that this market will continue to grow strongly. In July, only days after Google announced the release of an enterprise-oriented version of its Google Docs suite, Microsoft announced that the next major release of its benchmark productivity suite, Office 10, will include both locally installed software and a free, stripped-down, online version of its software. Web-based Office 10 will be a direct competitor to Google Docs, and this rivalry will increase the pressure on both Google and other providers of competing Web-based software to further increase the functionality and ease of use of their programs. Equally important, the publicity generated by this rivalry is likely to further increase awareness and adoption of Web-based applications.

This article originally appeared in the October 2009 issue of Practice Innovations.

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