Symantec enters hosted workspace battle

GoEverywhere is one of Symantec's Incubator projects

Symantec has entered the hosted workspace market with GoEverywhere, a service which places a user's entire workspace in a single web-based environment. The service is currently being trialled in the US as a free beta.

GoEverywhere offers word processing, slide-show presentations, spreadsheet applications and webmail, all available as an encrypted single sign-on service.

Web-based productivity suites have become a booming market in recent years, with big names such as Google and Microsoft joining established services such as Zoho.

"As the use of web-based applications increases, there is a need for our desktop or computing environment to adjust and become web-based," said Don Kleinschnitz, vice president and general manager for GoEverywhere.

"The GoEverywhere beta is incorporating next-generation cloud computing and Web 2.0 concepts in innovative ways to enhance customers' choice of how and when they want to access information."

GoEverywhere is one of the first products to emerge from Symantec's Incubator funding programme in which the company provides support for smaller projects to get off the ground.

Companies such as IBM, Cisco and Salesforce.com have similar initiatives designed to spark new ventures for their respective platforms and systems.