Strategic partners, OnlyOffice and CEO-Vision ensure to provide companies and public administrations with efficient tools focused on user needs.
Why integrate OnlyOffice with GoFAST ?
In 2016 GoFAST v2 was already an Open Source alternative to SharePoint and was able to finish with the obsolete file server "mess", offering the best of both worlds between cross-functional DMS and Collaborative Digital Workplace.
Since the integration of the OnlyOffice Suite 3 years ago, the GoFAST Collaborative DMS has been a relevant sovereign alternative to Microsoft's Office365 (and not only to SharePoint), deployed in organizations concerned about the security of their data.
Indeed, Ascensio System SIA's OnlyOffice offers a powerful office suite that includes online editors for text documents, spreadsheets and presentations highly compatible with Microsoft Office and OpenDocument file formats. OnlyOffice provides users with multiple editing tools and collaborative features ensuring better team workflow, with complex objects and layouts.
The big functional "plus", compared to other solutions, is that the integration of this Collaborative Suite with GoFAST has been completely designed: users do not have the impression of switching from one application to another one, fluidity in usage, each update of office files is versioned and time-stamped, a lock on the document page and in GoFAST Explorer users are informed that the document is in co-editing, etc.
OnlyOffice : a pragmatic choice for "users" and "security"
Solutions like Office Online and Google Suite are rejected by more and more CIOs, mainly for security and confidentiality issues (rejection of the Microsoft and Google Cloud). Beyond the requirements of CIOs, users needed a Suite compatible with docx, xlsx, pptx formats to be able to edit their documents calmly, without being blocked due to lack of compatibility.
After extensive study and testing, the experts at CEO-Vision opted for OnlyOffice. In 2017, this Collaborative Suite was added to the other "bricks" that make up the heart of the GoFAST DMS platform (Alfresco, Drupal, Solr, XMPP, Jitsi meet ...) to meet expectations of users and CIOs:
- the full-web app (nothing to install on PCs)
- good compatibility with MS Office files (docx, xlsx, pptx)
- ergonomics similar to MS Office suites (to limit the impact of the change)
- simultaneous co-editing of Office files,
- tracking changes
- the standard formats "docx", "xlsx", "pptx"
- the availability of essential features ("full-web" Office apps do not yet have all the features presented in the installed apps, including Office365)
- Open Source technology
- the availability of installed apps in order to guarantee their work with GoFAST "online editing" feature (already available for MS Office and LibreOffice)
- cost reduction of Office licenses
- more independence from the conditions imposed by large software publishers
- better control of the data with sovereign solutions and / or by "Onpremise" hosting rather than in the Microsoft Cloud, in particular in the case of Office365 and the Cloud Act
Regarding the need for independence and sovereignty, Cigref published "Open source, an alternative to major IT providers" (December 2018)
Since OnlyOffice was integrated in version 3.0 of GoFAST, the Collaborative Suite allows our users to work without the Microsoft Suite in almost all use cases (some still need the app installed on the PC for advanced features, for example: Office mail merge).
Desired changes of CEO-Vision
To go further, in order to offer even more freedom to users, CEO-Vision has started the tests on OnlyOffice apps.
Editing documents with the help of installed apps from GoFAST would allow responding to certain requests: having the choice between the web app and the installed app and having certain features not supported by a web app.
With GoFAST editing Office files from your PC has been available for MS Office and LibreOffice apps from the start. Therefore, a question here is to offer users a new high-quality alternative.
The project was developed by a team of experienced experts from Ascensio System SIA, a leading IT company headquartered in Riga, Latvia.
ONLYOFFICE was originally created for internal team collaboration.
The attempt to introduce it to the general public was well received: ONLYOFFICE received a lot of very positive comments from the Internet community. Therefore, its functionality has been revised and extended which has led to a steady growth of users from different countries.
With the GoFAST platform, CEO-Vision's strategy is to offer Organizations / Companies a sovereign alternative to GAFAM solutions and in particular to Microsoft's Office365-SharePoint-Teams.
Open Source: a dynamic ecosystem, but also strategic partnerships!
To formalize a 3-year-old technology partnership, CEO-Vision wanted to sign a contract with Ascensio System SIA, publisher of OnlyOffice. Paris Open Source Summit 2019, the event of the year for the entire ecosystem, was the perfect opportunity to celebrate this merger! Now a strategic partner, CEO-Vision will be able to further contribute to the evolutions of the Collaborative Suite and ensure that the requests of GoFAST users are prioritized.