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Box takes on Microsoft Office and OneNote with own online document editor
September 17, 2013 | Author: Adam Levine
From the beginning of its history the online collaboration service Box tried to hit Microsoft. More specifically, Microsoft SharePoint. These days it looked like a funny PR pitch, but look: now Box is big and growing while Sharepoint is disappearing in Office 365. And now Box is launching its own online document editor Box Notes, and Microsoft should start to worry. For building this tool Box hired Steven Sinofsky (who ran Microsoft Office and Windows) and Sam Schillace, a key force behind Google Docs. Of course, MS office - is the standard for exchanging documents between organizations. When you send a document to your client or partner, you want to be sure that the document will open and look the same as you format it. That is why all organizations use MS Office, and it will be very difficult to push Microsoft from this position.
But MS Office is not suitable for document collaboration within organization (for example, when you need to develop a plan with your collegues). It's correction tools are very complicated. And Microsoft's Office Web Apps, mimicking their desktop brothers - are also uncomfortable for collaboration. That's why, Google, Zoho, Teamlab and now Box are trying to take this niche away from Microsoft. And then, who knows, may be they will invent something with the document exchange standard.
Box Notes just like it's analogs (Google Docs, Zoho Writer, Teamlab Office) doesn't provide even 10% of MS Word functionality. And at the presentation Box developers frankly admitted it. They even showed (as a proof) the screenshot of Word with all toolbars open:
But Box Notes is perfectly suited for collaboration. It provides real-time co-editing (you see who is doing what), chat, over-text annotations and mobile version. And it's much easier than MS Word, so it will be easier to create new docs collaborate. Box Notes is inbuilt into Box's cloud storage so you can create, open and edit documents online.
See also: Top 10 Office suites
