By Dennis D. McDonald

No sooner have we grown accustomed to the horrible “Web 2.0” moniker (I plead guilty) than “Office 2.0” arrives.

No, don’t expect Microsoft Office to disappear overnight from your machine. But do expect that the number and variety of robust web-served applications will continue to expand — some at very low cost. Managing these services is going to be a challenge. And I don’t want to even think about the security and rights management issues remotely accessed applications and storage raise (at least until my next blog entry!)

One of the best overviews of Office 2.0 I’ve read is supplied by Ismael Ghalimi in his blog IT|Redux. I’ve classified this entry under “Living With Technology” since I’m very interested in seeing personally how far one can go with using  remotely hosted applications. I’ve already published here my experiences using a remotely hosted sales force automation tool as well as collaborative document authoring tools.

Check out Ismael’s entries under his “Office 2.0” heading. Be prepared for some surprises. Did you know, for example, that Google has a built-in calculator? I didn’t.

I should state that I’m not 100% sold on Office 2.0. I’ve written here about my concerns about Google’s GMail, for example, and last night I left this comment on one of Ismael’s Office 2.0 entries:

“CIO: I’m proposing that we replace our inhouse email system with GMAIL.”

“CEO: Is that a good idea, having someone else manage our secure documents?”

“CIO: I trust Google to take better care of our documents and attachments than we can. Look at their resources!”

“CEO: Have you read Google’s privacy policy statements?”

“CIO: I haven’t. Why?”

“CEO: Can you tell me how long Google will retain copies of our corporate emails and attachments after we delete them from the GMAIL system?”

“CIO: ?????”