Symantec hops into hosted workspace battle

By Shaun Nichols on Jan 28, 2009 3:01 PM
Filed under Software

Symantec has become the latest company to wade into the hosted workspace market.

The company on Monday announced GoEverywhere, a beta service which places a user's entire workspace in single web-based environment.

The service is currently being trialled in the US as a free beta program.

Among the applications which the service offers to users are word processing, slide-show presentations, spread-sheet applications and webmail services.

All of the applications will be available as an encrypted, single sign-on service.

Web-based productivity suites have become a booming market in recent years with big names such as Google and Microsoft joining established services such as Zoho.

"As the use of Web-based applications increase, there is a need for our desktop or computing environment to also adjust and become web-based,"said Don Kleinschnitz, vice president and general manager for GoEverywhere

"The GoEverywhere beta is incorporating next-generation cloud computing and web 2.0 concepts in innovative ways to enhance customers’ choice of how and when they want to access information."

In addition to joining a growing field of hosted workspace systems, GoEverywhere earns distinction as one of the first products to emerge from Symantec's 'Incubator' funding programme in which the company provides support for smaller projects to get off the ground.

Companies such as IBM, Cisco and Salesforce.com have similar incubator operations which are designed to spark new ventures for their respective platforms and systems.