Richard MacManus has been tracking the web office space as long as anyone and he always has good analysis. I also think his ideas are the perfect example of why Adobe’s strategy is so good – because it’s flexible.

In Richard’s article last week on ZDNet, he talked about Nick Carr’s timeline for Office applications and explains his belief that the office suite will be fully web based in 5 years. I can agree with that, I think we’ll be uber-connected in 5 years and that a web office is in the cards. But that’s still 5 years away, and we need to innovate in the meantime.

This is where Adobe has the perfect strategy, and I can’t believe Richard doesn’t give it more attention. If you’re building an office suite for the future, Adobe technologies have you covered for both today and tomorrow. You can build your suite in Flex 2 (but it needs much better Rich Text Support…*ahem*) and deliver it as an Apollo application. When your users want the web, they have it, when they need to move to the desktop, they have it.

But as we become more connected, you have a code base and a technology that is fully backwards compatible and can help you make that web only transition. If the core of your application is built in Flex, you’ve already got a fantastic web based experience, Apollo just makes it available offline. When you no longer need to have it work offline, you’re underlying technology stays the same.

Richard, technologies like these are the absolute best way to make the web-only office come true. You have to take the intermediate steps, and Adobe really does provide the tools to do that.

[tags]Web Office, Web 2.0, Adobe, Apollo, Flex[/tags]

Related posts:

1. Flex and a Google Office Suite
2. Microsoft’s New Internet Strategy
3. Web Based Office Tools and Thoughts on Flickr
4. Adobe’s Seattle Campus