The enterprise

As cloud computing gains steam in the enterprise, many IT shops are looking for ways to move stuff out of their own server rooms and into someone else’s. This has given rise to services like Google Apps and Office 365, which offer e-mail, calendaring, and other Web-based services that completely replace not just software running on your company’s servers, however also software running on your company’s desktops.

Productivity software is different, thanks to Microsoft Office. Most businesses will have to be able to read Office documents, and likely produce them too. Without these interoperability constraints, most of the products here could stand on their own as productivity apps. However Office compatibility is too important to ignore.