Microsoft Office opens to home workers

A web company that lets people working from home access Microsoft Office products has extended its beta service. oneDrum.com is a free Desktop application that lets multiple users, working on or offline, share and simultaneously author documents in Microsoft Office and use Office tools such as Excel and Powerpoint. The extension, which has been timed to coincide with National Work from Home Day, means that the first thousand people who register with the website will receive the service. More than 3.5 million people work from home in the UK, a rise of 20 per cent since 1997, according to the Office of National Statistics. However, one of the barriers preventing people working from home is getting reliable access to networks and software that are traditionally tied to the office. Home workers can also struggle to collaborate with office-based colleagues. Jasper Westaway, CEO and founder of oneDrum, hopes the service will remove the obstacles that exist when people work away from the office. "Collaboration should be about working together to make things better," said Westaway. "This is why we are inviting 1,000 early adopters to test oneDrum and help us to shape its development so that we are sure to create a tool that fits users’ needs, rather than forcing users to fit the tool," said Jasper Westaway.