Review: Extrinsica Office Anywhere hosted software

Extrinsica Office Anywhere is a little different from other hosted software services.

It uses Citrix software to provide remote access to the company’s managed Windows application servers.

But instead of a hosted desktop, users get a menu of individual Microsoft Office applications and an Exchange mailbox and storage space.

All that’s needed at the user end is a PC with an internet connection and a browser.

The Office Anywhere Small Business Edition provides access to the full set of Office Professional applications, plus 10GB of backup-protected storage shared by all the users in the company.

Each user also gets an Exchange 2007 mailbox (1GB per user), which is accessible using either a hosted Outlook client or Outlook Web Access. Helpdesk support is also included in the price.

Alternatively, there’s a Micro Business Edition, costing £50 per user per month, for which you get Microsoft Office Standard plus 1GB of storage and an Exchange mailbox, with access to the helpdesk on a pay-as-you-go basis.

Everything is managed for you and access is the same, regardless of the package. Connect to the Office Anywhere portal using an SSL-capable browser and you’re prompted to sign on with a user name and password. If the Citrix client isn’t installed, you’ll be given the chance to download it with software available for both Windows and Linux.

You can also buy a USB key (£70 ex Vat), which contains a virtualised copy of the client and the Firefox 3.0 browser that enables mobile users to connect without having to install any software locally ­ useful if the host PC is locked down for security.

You’re then presented with a set of icons to start up the various applications, which appear to run on the local PC, but, in reality, are hosted on a remote application server. Any documents created will, similarly, be stored on the remote server, optimising both performance and security as backups are taken on a regular basis to protect server-side storage.

You can also open and save files locally, but this can really slow things down, especially on large documents, as everything has to be copied to the server hosting the application, then copied back to be saved again.

Printing can be handled by locally attached printers or network print queues, both of which will be mapped to the hosted application when it starts.

Performance will depend primarily on the speed of your internet connection. We used ADSL broadband for most of our tests, which gave results almost indistinguishable from running the applications locally. However, the Citrix ICA protocol is optimised for low bandwidth connections and should give good results even on slower wireless links.

Font rendering wasn’t quite as good as with local applications, but it was acceptable. Indeed, we found Office Anywhere to be a very workable solution, likely to appeal most to small businesses unwilling or unable to install and run in-house applications. It’s also great for workers who spend a lot of their time on the road.

On the downside, authentication is limited to passwords only, you can only run Office programs and you’re a bit stuck if you can’t get an internet connection. However, Extrinsica is working on that one, with plans to eventually put virtualised applications on the optional USB stick to support offline working.

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