By Alison Diana
Think business office applications, and no doubt, Microsoft’s well-entrenched Office suite immediately leaps to mind. There are, however, competitors out there, including HyperOffice, which is specifically targeting SMBs and partners with its eponymous suite of communication and collaboration software.
The developer recently expanded its cloud-based software to include new social capabilities such as business social networking, activity streams, social messaging, and instant messaging. These capabilities are deeply integrated into HyperOffice’s existing suite of business tools to boost employees’ productivity and adoption, said Farzin Arsanjani, president of HyperOffice, in an interview.
Collaboration is all about addressing the productivity challenge. We offer customers both structured and unstructured social collaboration under the same user interface. Collaboration in the absence of well-defined workflows and well-defined business processes doesn’t make sense.
To separate it from competitors, make it more useful to customers, and more attractive to partners, HyperOffice is easily configurable, according to Arsanjani. Solution providers can offer the product in different packages and provide customers with their own services through the API, he told me. HyperOffice will deliver billing, if VARs choose, Arsanjani added.
The developer is also offering margins “north of 30 percent,” he said. Of course, as service providers are well aware, cloud sales add up far beyond the initial software contract. HyperOffice knows this too, and provides its partners with other opportunities through professional services, an automated application-building tool, add-on intranets and extranets, and additional margin-rich service interactions.
Recognizing that no software is an island, HyperOffice integrates with other applications, including Microsoft Outlook, Arsanjani said.
We have deep support for Outlook. If Outlook is your client of choice, you can share your contacts, calendar, and notes. You can use Outlook for your email. We have full iMAP support. We have full email support for iOS, Android, RIM, and most Java phones. We also have full commenting and interlinking throughout the product. With that interlinking, I can link any number of items to one other, such as projects, meetings, contacts, etc.
The suite also includes a full audit history for files, has full versioning which can be turned off and on, and granular permission setting that extends down to the user file level. In addition, HyperOffice has 99.99 percent uptime capabilities and full disaster recovery backup. And since HyperOffice recommends, as a best-practice, that customers store data offline, this provides partners with another opportunity to develop their trusted advisor role.
Available for PC and Mac, the software also has native language support for Japanese, Spanish, and localized French.
HyperOffice, in use by more than 350,000 people around the world, is available for a free trial. Pricing begins at $3 per user per month from the à la carte menu to $15 per user per month in the enterprise pricing package, which contains every option, according to Arsanjani.