CloudOn launched in the US back in January, bringing Microsoft Office functionality direct to the iPad. It swiftly found its way to pole position in Apple’s free app category, and in response to ‘enormous demand’, it finally hit Apple’s UK App Store in February.
Just to recap, the cloud-based service delivers full Microsoft Office capabilities with Dropbox integration, and transforms Apple’s market-dominating tablet into a mobile workspace capable of accessing, creating, editing and saving all your Office documents on the go.
The tool taps the power of the cloud to connect to Microsoft Office software on CloudOn’s servers, so in effect your iPad is being used as a screen. This allows users to create and access Microsoft Office documents how they normally would, with the same look and feature-set.
Users can track changes in Word, manipulate pivot tables in Excel and view PowerPoint files in full presentation mode on their iPad, and access them anytime on any platform through their Dropbox account.
Today, however, CloudOn is rolling out version 2.0, as it seeks to capitalize on its “nearly one million consumers and professionals” across the US, Canada and UK.
CloudOn now lets iPad users create, edit, share and save both Microsoft Office and Adobe files from their Box account, in addition to their Dropbox account.
“Over 120,000 businesses and 82% of the Fortune 500 use Box to store, manage and access their business content,” says Chris Yeh, vice president of platform at Box. “Our integration with CloudOn is a proven enterprise mobility solution that will enable millions of knowledge workers to be more productive and efficient when working from an iPad.”
Version 2.0, which is hitting the App Store today, also provides Adobe Reader to view PDFs, and users have access to a universal viewer for any file, ranging from raw Photoshop images to everyday image files, including: PNG, JPEG and GIF.
CloudOn is a partner of Microsoft and Adobe, and it says it has legitimately licensed the technology used to deliver the Office and Adobe components of its service.
The latest version also includes email integration that lets users open and send emails along with attachments with a single tap, without leaving the app.
With close to one million downloads in three months, CloudOn has done well to gain such traction so quickly. “We believe the CloudOn workspace is revolutionizing the world of mobile productivity,” says Milind Gadekar, CEO and founder of CloudOn. “The initial positive response validates the progress we’ve made so far. And this launch makes it even easier for our users to get to their information, use familiar applications and share their work.”
➤ CloudOn
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