Free Integration Tools by Thinkfree Allow Mash up of Office Functionality with Web Applications

WebKnowHow
Friday, November 10, 2006; 02:29 AM

ThinkFree, Inc., developer of an online office productivity suite, announced the launch of ThinkFree Viewers, free tools that allow Web services, such as Coil (www.coil-os.com), a virtual office application for work processing, to add office productivity functionality to their applications and Web sites. Viewers also provide Web users with an easy way to view office documents on the Web or from their desktop without having to purchase office suite applications. The announcement was made at the Web 2.0 Conference, which is being held November 7-9, 2006 in San Francisco.

ThinkFree Online is a complete Internet-based office productivity suite to blend the best of the Internet's collaboration features with comprehensive Microsoft Office compatibility. ThinkFree providers easy integration of its tools for online creation, collaboration and editing of Microsoft Office-format documents with other Web services like Coil. The combination of ThinkFree and Coil brings together content creation services and a work-processing platform for end-to-end office productivity.

"Coil plus ThinkFree equals an outside-the-box office solution for professionals, students and anyone getting by with documents scattered all over the place, over-stuffed inboxes, and no project management tool to speak of," said Steve van Zutphen, CEO of Coil. "For all those generally unwilling to pay hundreds of dollars for software stuck in a box, this is great news."

Coil integrated ThinkFree to provide an on-demand virtual office where users can create and share documents, communicate on tasks, easily organize information, and synchronize team goals with project data. These offerings fit seamlessly on top of existing infrastructures, delivering a familiar, rich client experience without the heavy costs of legacy systems.

"Instead of one company trying to provide an end-to-end solution to satisfy all of the customer's needs, we are living the Web 2.0 mantra by providing an office mash-up that can be used by other Web services," added TJ Kang, ThinkFree CEO. "Our core competency is office productivity. Coil has built a virtual office that reduces the administrative burden of project management. Our integration technology allowed ThinkFree and Coil to offer a best-of-breed solution that address the everyday needs of business professionals, students and busy families."

In addition, NHN, the largest Korean Internet portal, signed a $3.2 million contract with ThinkFree to integrate office applications into NHN's NAVER portal site. NHN licensed the technology from ThinkFree to provide its 23 million users with the ability to create, edit and view office documents online through their NAVER accounts.

ThinkFree Viewers for Web developers include: application programming interfaces, a code generator for cut and paste integration, and blog plug-ins. ThinkFree Viewers for users include: ThinkFree Widgets for opening files from the desktop and ThinkFree Extensions to easily view documents in a Web browser. These viewers are available for free at viewers.thinkfree.com.

ThinkFree also provides strategic partners with tools for deeper integration beyond its free viewer technology, as in the cases of NHN and Coil.

ThinkFree leverages the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) from Amazon Web Services (aws.amazon.com) to ensure ThinkFree Viewers are highly available for users. Amazon EC2 is a Web service that provides resizable compute capacity in the cloud. Businesses like ThinkFree use a simple Web service interface to obtain and configure capacity with minimal friction. It allows users to have complete control over their computing resources and lets them run on Amazon's proven computing environment. ThinkFree also plans to use Amazon Web Services for storage (Amazon Simple Storage Service - "Amazon S3") and Amazon EC2 to ensure that ThinkFree Online users' documents remain available and secure.

"Office productivity documents are one of the most mission-critical elements of the Fortune 500 companies we deal with," stated Kang. "With the experience Amazon has built from its Web store, there was really no other solution that could come close to satisfying our users' needs for enterprise-class storage and application management." ThinkFree's use of Amazon Web Services allows ThinkFree to address the needs of enterprise users with a complete, reliable, secure solution. Amazon EC2 ensures that ThinkFree Online can handle the scalability needed for the rapid expansion of ThinkFree Online members and the tens of thousands of documents they create weekly.

"We're pleased that ThinkFree has chosen to back their solutions with Amazon EC2," said Steve Rabuchin, director of developer relations for Amazon Web Services. "ThinkFree can focus on inventing new solutions for their customers knowing that Amazon Web Services is managing their storage and computing needs."