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.
Open Source: a dynamic ecosystem, but also strategic partnerships!
CEO-Vision has signed a contract with Ascensio System SIA, publisher of OnlyOffice, to formalize a 3-year-old technological partnership. The Paris Open Source Summit 2019, the event of the year for the entire ecosystem, was the ideal occasion to celebrate this rapprochement! Now a strategic partner, CEO-Vision will be able to contribute even more to the evolutions of the Collaborative Suite, and ensure that GoFAST users' requests are prioritized.
Why integrate OnlyOffice with GoFAST ?
Even back then (2016), GoFAST v2 was an Open Source alternative to SharePoint and was able to do away with the "mess" of the obsolete file server, offering the best of both worlds between cross-functional DMS and Collaborative Digital Workplace.
Since the integration of the OnlyOffice Suite 3 years ago, GoFAST Collaborative DMS has been a relevant, sovereign alternative to Microsoft's Office365 (and not just SharePoint), deployed in organizations concerned about the security of their data.
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 functionalities for improved team workflow with complex objects and formatting.
The big functional "plus" compared with other solutions is that the integration of this Collaborative Suite with GoFAST has been thought out in a comprehensive way: users don't have the impression of switching from one application to another, maintaining fluidity of use; each update of Office files is versioned and time-stamped; a lock on the document page and in GoFAST Explorer informs users that the document is being co-edited, etc.
OnlyOffice: a pragmatic, user- and security-oriented choice:
Solutions such as Office Online and Google Suite are being rejected by more and more CIOs, mainly for security and confidentiality reasons (rejection of Microsoft and Google Cloud). Over and above the demands of CIOs, users needed a Suite compatible with docx, xlsx and pptx formats, so they could edit their documents without being blocked by lack of compatibility.
After extensive research and testing, CEO-Vision's experts 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 the expectations of both users and CIOs:full-web client (nothing to install on PCs)
- full-web client (nothing to install on PCs)
- good compatibility with MS Office files (docx, xlsx, pptx)
- MS Office Suite-like ergonomics (to limit the impact of change)
- simultaneous co-editing of Office files,
- tracking of modifications
- standard "docx", "xlsx", "pptx" formats
- availability of essential functionalities ("full-web" Office clients do not yet offer all the functionalities found in fat clients, including Office365)
- Open Source technology
- the existence of fat clients, with the aim of eventually being able to guarantee their operation via GoFAST's "edit online" functionality (already available for MS Office and LibreOffice)
- lower Office license costs
- greater independence from conditions imposed by major publishers
- greater control over data with sovereign solutions and/or by hosting "Onpremise" rather than in the Microsoft Cloud, particularly in the case of Office365 and Cloud Act
With regard to the need for independence and sovereignty, Cigref has published "Open source, an alternative to major IT providers" (Décembre 2018).
Since OnlyOffice was integrated into version 3.0 of GoFAST, the Collaborative Suite has enabled our users to do without the Microsoft Suite in almost all cases (some still need the so-called "fat" client installed on the PC for advanced functions, e.g. Office mailing).
CEO-Vision's desired developments
To take this a step further, i.e. to offer users even greater freedom, CEO-Vision has begun a series of tests on OnlyOffice fat clients.
Editing documents with thick clients from GoFAST would meet certain demands: having the choice between the web client and the thick client, and having certain functionalities not supported by a web client.
With GoFAST, editing Office files from your PC has been available for MS Office and LibreOffice fat clients from the outset. The aim here is to offer users a new, high-quality alternative.