IBM Docs Beta launched, attempts to be a competitor to Google Docs and Office 365

IBM has gone ahead and released a beta version of its IBM Docs, which is a cloud based document editing tool, much like Google Docs and Office 365. IBM hopes to create a competitor to Google and Microsoft’s cloud based offerings with a final release of IBM Docs very soon.

“We have approached IBM Docs with the idea that a document is a container of different sections, and so we have made it a flexible item that can integrate more collaborative elements,” IBM product manager Jeanette Barlow stated.

IBM Docs, just like Office 365 and Google Docs, offers users the ability to share and edit text, spreadsheets, and presentation documents. IBM Docs also offers a cool feature that allows uses to assign specific sections of any documents to different users. This neat little feature is unavailable in Google Docs or Office 365.

“IBM Docs is a new office productivity suite for working on documents, spreadsheets and presentations — together — in the cloud. IBM Docs only a browser and an account, and you are able to easily create professional looking documents and share them with others. IBM Docs is simple yet powerful – letting you get started quickly, but delivering the advanced features you need,” IBM states on its official website.

IBM Docs is part of IBM’s LotusLive cloud platform, which is undergoing a re-branding and will be called IBM Smart Cloud for Social Business. You can test drive IBM Docs on IBM’s Greenhouse website here. The final version is expected later in the year.