Online office tools provider Zoho today released a beta version of Zoho Start, a launch pad for Zoho’s suite of office applications. Zoho currently offers a suite of 16 separate apps and utilities, and while they have a common login, there was nothing really tying them together as a single office suite. There was no easy way to access your spreadsheets and word processing documents from a single space, for example.
Zoho Start is what the company is calling a first step “towards integrating Zoho Apps under a single page.” The page currently aggregates files from Zoho Writer, Sheet, and Show and lets users organize them into folders, as well as share, tag, import, and export documents via a common interface. Zoho Start also draws a list of contacts from Zoho Chat, and a features a launcher for their entire application suite.
Zoho Start is still quite rough around the edges. It so far only supports Zoho’s core tools and isn’t the prettiest application, but by tying together their apps under a common launch interface, Zoho is taking a step toward a fully web-based suite that has the cohesive feel of desktop systems. Perhaps Nick Carr won’t have to wait until 2010.
