SaaS in the office is the next big hurdle for the Software as a Service model.  Progress is being made, however to convert users of the application we use the most everyday, the offline and collaboration questions need to be solved well.

I am using buzzword at this moment to write this article and I am able to do everything I need to do simply and easily. It does not have all the features you may possibly need but 99% of my requirements are a couple of clicks away, many less clicks away than in MS Word. Just as important as that is that I WANT to use it, it’s attractive, inviting and COOL.

buzzword (http://www.buzzword.com/) is built on Adobe’s offline platform and uses  AIR and FLEX, and built so well that Adobe recently purchased the company that built it.  It manages both online and offline access pretty well by allowing full use of application when offline, auto-saving constantly when online, and instantaneously picking up when it is no longer connected. It didn’t  however allow me to ‘save’ my document while I was offline ready for a synchronization when I next connected.

buzzword demonstrates many of the facets that I believe the next wave of applications should as well as some of the power of the offline web concept touted by organisations like Firefox, Adobe, and Google recently.  The offline web needs to be bulletproof for SaaS to hit it’s (enormous) potential – offerings like buzzword are encouraging me to think that the offline web will be here to help that sooner rather than later.

There are many other shining example of quality SaaS offerings in this area, Zoho, Thinkfree, and Google Apps are some that I have personally used, but the one example that has impressed me the most has to be buzzword.

There has been a lot of progress made towards SaaS taking over in the office productivity area.  The next importantly steps are full offline functionality and unlocking the collaboration potential that a SaaS model provides.  None of the products I have used do this effectively enough to make the Software as a Service model impossible to pass up, however we’re quickly getting close, and quickly.

* I also post versions of relevant AsiaPacific articles from this this blog on the SaaS Asia Pacific Community site.