Zoho as an Office Appliance

Red Herring wrote an article in August 2006 which mentioned 17 Microsoft Office Killers. The line up is:

• Microsoft Word: Thinkfree, Zoho Writer, Writeboard, Writely , Rallypoint , JotSpot Live
• Microsoft Excel: JotSpot Tracker, Numsum , iRows, Zoho Street
• PowerPoint: S5, Zoho Show
• Office ‘Suite’: ThinkFree, gOffice, Zoho Virtual Office
• Microsoft Project: Basecamp, JotSpot Project Manager

Zoho figures in all the categories except MS-Project.
Over the last year Zoho has added some very interesting products. They now have a CRM application and all the office productivity tools - email with calendaring, a word processor, a spreadsheet, powerpoint, chat, a planner, a wiki and a host of other interesting tools including an online questionnaire called 'Zoho Challenge', an online survey tool named 'Zoho Polls' and a site monitoring service. Very Impressive.
It would be even more impressive and useful of Zoho could be offered by a local partner as an Office Appliance that includes a dual ISP connection, proxy and network security. The appliance could be installed on the customer's office premises (local appliance), and connected via the internet to the partner's data center where a mirror appliance (remote appliance) is maintained. To reduce issues to do with bandwidth, Customers could choose to configure Zoho to use applications on the local appliance (via a LAN) or the remote appliance (via the internet). LAN access would be suitable for users who work out of a fixed geographical office location.