Doing Office & .NET without Office - Aspose.NET

I just tripped across another cool product. I haven't used it and can't vouch for it, but figured I'd pass the info along. Aspose (I have no idea how to pronounce it).

Their website claims to have commercial .NET components for reading and writing to Microsoft Office documents, specifically Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Project. The website positions the product as mostly a reporting tool and it is not designed to replace the Office object models. In a sense, these components help solve the document creation problem on the server for template oriented solutions (you have a office document template and you want to stuff data into it).

This is one of a number of new components on the market to help simplify document generation on the server. I am curious:

• Do you think document creation for Office document outside of Office is important? (on the server, or in environments where Office is not installed)
• Have you used this product or similar ones? If so what is your experience with them?