eXpresso is a hosted workspace for Microsoft Office

Microsoft Office

Microsoft Office is a non-free commercial office suite of inter-related desktop applications, servers and services for the Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X operating systems, introduced by Microsoft in August 1, 1989. Initially a marketing term for a bundled set of applications, the first version of...

 communities. Excel

Microsoft Excel

Microsoft Excel is a proprietary commercial spreadsheet application written and distributed by Microsoft for Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X. It features calculation, graphing tools, pivot tables, and a macro programming language called Visual Basic for Applications...

 spreadsheet management is the first application offered. It is among the growing number of Web 2.0

Web 2.0

The term Web 2.0 is associated with web applications that facilitate participatory information sharing, interoperability, user-centered design, and collaboration on the World Wide Web...

, SaaS

Software as a Service

Software as a service , sometimes referred to as "on-demand software," is a software delivery model in which software and its associated data are hosted centrally and are typically accessed by users using a thin client, normally using a web browser over the Internet.SaaS has become a common...

 offerings in the online spreadsheet market. eXpresso serves as a collaborative platform specifically for Excel business users.

History

eXpresso originated as part of an enterprise collaboration product developed by Huy Nguyen. The prevalence of spreadsheet collaboration and sharing prompted investors to present eXpresso as a standalone product. The free public Beta release was introduced in August 2007.

Features

The eXpresso service includes such features as Version Control, Compare, Cell Watch, and integrated online chat tools. The Compare feature allows two spreadsheets to be viewed side-by-side with differences highlighted and color coded by type of change: formula or value.

Cell Watch enables a user to apply an alert that will automatically generate a notifying email when a designated cell value or formula is changed by a member of the community. Details of all spreadsheet changes are automatically recorded and become permanently attached to the document to provide an audit trail.

For Excel only

eXpresso does not offer a generic or browser-based spreadsheet. It is specifically and exclusively designed to support Excel

Microsoft Excel

Microsoft Excel is a proprietary commercial spreadsheet application written and distributed by Microsoft for Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X. It features calculation, graphing tools, pivot tables, and a macro programming language called Visual Basic for Applications...

 spreadsheets. Excel users can optionally download and install an add-in called eXpresso Add-In for Excel. This add-in allows to upload, open and edit eXpresso spreadsheets from Excel

Microsoft Excel

Microsoft Excel is a proprietary commercial spreadsheet application written and distributed by Microsoft for Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X. It features calculation, graphing tools, pivot tables, and a macro programming language called Visual Basic for Applications...

. Further the add-in allows spreadsheets to be taken offline to perform work on it independent of an Internet connection.

Integration and interoperability

eXpresso is available on Salesforce.com's AppExchange platform.

Patents

eXpresso has multiple pending patents on its underlying technology. It transforms Excel data and creates a series of related database structures (tables) for data, cell references, formulas, macros, and formats. It then performs the specified operations on data, structure and formulas before reassembling the result and presenting it back in native Excel.

Subscriptions

Pricing is based on a subscription model which includes a free version for light users or individuals. The user agreement shows that it is presently in Version 1.0 beta. It has a 10Meg space limit per user license without charge.