The real Web Spreadsheet: SocialText + WikiCalc?

Amidst all the buzz that Google’s Web Spreadsheet has been generating, Rod Boothby has an insightful take on the recent events in his post: Spreadsheet Wars! Microsoft, Google and SocialText. SocialText is now providing an enterprise solution for web-enabled spreadsheets.

What application does a web-enabled spreadsheet have in the enterprise? He describes a common real-world business scenario: building reports for management but cutting and pasting information from various spreadsheets and documents. The problem is how do you connect all the information you need from around the organization? How do you avoid what we call “cut-and-paste” integration?

Rod says “If every spreadsheet was on a web server, with a distinct API, and access control tools, then solving the problem would be easy.”

That’s exactly what Excel Services provides in Office 2007. Excel Services allows business people to publish a spreadsheet to the server. The spreadsheet can be versioned, part of a workflow, and shared via a hyperlink. This spreadsheet can also be rendered in the web browser - Firefox and IE, no ActiveX needed - and a set of Web Services APIs enable programmatic access to the document and the calculations it contains. Full access control is part of the publishing process with the Office SharePoint Server.

Check out this Screencast to see how it works.