Office in the Clouds

I recently heard that Oracle, recent acquirer of Sun Microsystems, and current owner of OpenOffice.org has released a product called "Oracle Cloud Office" in parallel with their latest version of Oracle Office (essentially the paid-for version of Open Office). The thing that interests me is that the Desktop version of the office suite could be integrated with the cloud version. However, I intend to migrate from OpenOffice.org to Libre Office in the near future. And I started thinking, that a really nice feature for Libre Office would be the ability to integrate with Google Docs. After all, many people already have Google accounts, and can easily access Google Docs. Or better yet, Libre Office could simply provide an infrastructure which would developers to create plug-ins that provide interoperability with any cloud office suite.

For simplicity's sake let's just look at Libre Office working with Google Docs. With this set-up multiple Libre Office users could collaborate on a document, using the full editing power of Libre Office, while taking advantage of the collaborative power of Google Docs. And if a collaborator doesn't wish to use Libre Office they can still edit the document using Google Docs. Or conversely, someone who doesn't want to use the Google Docs interface could edit a document using Libre Office.

Personally, I believe that while Cloud Computing is useful and interesting, it will never entirely replace traditional desktop computing, at least not for me. At the moment at least web applications are not as feature rich, or as fast as desktop applications. And with Cloud computing, an internet connection is absolutely necessary. When an internet connection is unavailable, or prohibitively slow, Cloud Computing simply can't compete with desktop computing. So the optimum solution is to have desktop applications which will work with or without an internet connection, and can interact with Cloud Computing services when an internet connection is available.