Pagos Enables Real-Time Spreadsheet Sharing

Published: November 10, 2009

by Alex Woodie

System i shops that do a lot of work in Excel may be interested in hearing about a new offering from Pagos designed to improve collaboration by enabling users to simultaneously access spreadsheets over the Web. SpreadsheetLIVE is free for now, and Pagos will be selling on-premise and SaaS licensees to the product when the beta ends this month.

Spreadsheets are notoriously difficult to track. One version quickly begets another one, and soon enough, changes are missed, revisions are overlooked, and the process breaks down. Housing spreadsheets on a server instead of distributing them through e-mail helps reduce the jumble of untracked spreadsheets.

SpreadsheetLIVE takes it one step further by controlling access to spreadsheets through Web browsers. The offering also allows multiple users to simultaneously access the same spreadsheet, which is something that Excel can't do.

Real-time integration with data sources through ODBC makes this product relevant to a range of enterprise customers, including System i shops. By synchronizing enterprise data sources with SpreadsheetLIVE in real time through ODBC, users can access current enterprise data in the spreadsheet format.

"SpreadsheetLIVE connects directly to the database and automatically synchronizes information in the spreadsheet as it is updated in real-time through the native database," says Ugur Kadakal, CEO of Pagos. "And, because it can easily handle very large and elaborate spreadsheets, this saves a tremendous amount of time and effort, and it reduces the risk of mistakes in importing data and updating formulas."

Users will find a relatively rich spreadsheet environment, including support for 330 worksheet formulas; support for graphs and pivot tables; support for cell formatting, number formats, and background colors; and support for international character sets. Firefox and IE users will be able to access the software, and a multi-language version is in the works. For more information or to join the beta, visit www.spreadsheetlive.com.

                     Post this story to del.icio.us
               Post this story to Digg
    Post this story to Slashdot