As the Nov 30, 2014, end-of-life date draws near for Cisco’s WebEx WebOffice, scores of WebOffice users looking for an alternative have approached us. Many of these customers were on WebEx WebOffice for years, and are in the difficult position of not only having to find an alternative, but also find a way to safeguard years of data stored in WebOffice.

A quick history of WebEx WebOffice

At HyperOffice, we have closely followed the evolution of WebOffice over the years. Along with HyperOffice, they were one of the first solutions in the cloud collaboration market, and indeed, one of our first competitors. They started out as intranets.com, and were acquired by WebEx (following which they became WebOffice), which was further acquired by Cisco. Being under the umbrella of a global IT corporation ultimately hurt rather than helped the product, as it lost its way, and more or less ceased development in the late 2000s.

This lead to a gradual outflow of users from WebOffice, thousands of which have come to HyperOffice over the years. The companies which chose to remain were in for a jolt, when Cisco announced the initiation of End-of-life (EOL) proceedings for WebOffice late in 2013.

The HyperOffice offer for WebEx WebOffice users

We have a deep understanding of the requirements of WebOffice users, as well as its product philosophy. HyperOffice closely parallels WebOffice in terms of functionality, and we have continued to innovate and keep at the leading edge, and bring many additional features. Because of this, hundreds of WebOffice users have approached and successful migrated to HyperOffice since the EOL announcement. We continue to offer special pricing packages to WebOffice users looking for a new home and importantly, we are also offering migration services to ensure that transitioning users can bring over years of data, and continue working with minimal business disruption.

Please visit the following page to find more about HyperOffice as a WebEx WebOffice Alternative.

You may see our press release on the subject here.

While collaboration is something everyone in a business undertakes everyday, the word “collaboration”, due to its inherent abstractness sometimes doesn’t convey much to the listener. As a developer of collaboration software, this is a challenge we have faced at HyperOffice, and gotten better at overcoming over the years. In that ongoing effort, the following graphic is a quick, crisp summation of what benefit HyperOffice can bring to your business.

(click to enlarge)

The Collaboration Market

The rapidly growing cloud market and the significant shifts in the voice and data services marketplace have created unprecedented challenges and opportunities for service providers. While the challenges presented to service providers are numerous and of strategic significance, in the interest of brevity, I will focus on opportunities specific to cloud collaboration.

Business OTT services like UC, UCC, and social collaboration are experiencing a surge in demand (Gartner predicts the collaboration market with grow to $21 B by 2018), and offer much greater margins than consumer OTT services, which are harder to monetize. As PWC observed in its recent report, service providers are especially well positioned to serve the business market given their preexisting relationship in business IT departments, and ownership of networks and infrastructure which allows them to offer best-in-market SLAs.

Three key drivers determine the success of cloud solutions and in particular cloud collaboration solutions – 1) rapid adoption, 2) ease of use and 3) value, determined by a ratio of feature and functionality to price.

Point collaboration solutions (single application solutions) may offer ease of use and rapid adoption for a specific application, but they certainly lack value as compared to unified applications that offer multiple applications and capabilities. In addition point collaboration solutions challenge the notion of ease of use and adoption in the context of using technology in support of specific business processes. Improving any workflow through collaboration and communication requires the use of multiple applications – email, calendaring, document management, project management, social collaboration, im and presence, click to call and conferencing applications. Ease of use and rapid adoption are negatively impacted when users have to deal with multiple applications with different user interfaces, different login requirements and information silos while collaborating and communicating.

Collaboration and communication systems with tightly integrated applications, a unified user interface and consistent behavior across all applications, channels and devices without compromising ease of use and rapid adoption deliver the best value for businesses. A typical business customer can deploy a single unified collaboration and communication system (UCC) and support a wide range of business processes critical to their operations and team members. Users of these systems will need to learn only one user interface and adopt one system as they seamlessly navigate across applications, information sources and devices. There is no need to deal with a new user interface and a new information silo every time the user needs to work with a different application.
Service providers benefit from offering unified collaboration and communication systems that deliver a tightly integrated and unified user interface across applications, channels and devices because:

1. A well Unified Collaboration and Communication system satisfies the 3 key drivers to the success of any cloud collaboration solution – 1) rapid adoption, 2) ease of use, and 3) value
2. Service providers can consolidate a number of point collaboration and communication solutions into one
3. UCC systems with the right architecture can serve as a platform for offering additional services

So how can service providers participate in the booming cloud collaboration and communication market?

The initial reaction has been to forge partnerships with prominent OTT services like Google and Microsoft and benefit from the demand built by them. This approach is shortsighted. It is tantamount to seeding the market for a potential competitor and accepting a greatly reduced role in the future. It gives service providers little more than short-term profits in the form of minimal “reseller” margins. A more strategically sound approach is for service providers to launch their own OTT services, to take control of their customers’ data and to offer them branded OTT services aligned with their strategic and financial goals. By leveraging their own brand and their sales and marketing strength, service providers will get a much larger share of the revenue pie while protecting their customer base.

While service providers have network expertise, operational experience and sales and marketing prowess, they are understandably anxious about developing their own OTT applications. The risks of building a cloud based, scalable, simple to use and successful software product, under budget and in time to take advantage of a rapidly moving market are significant. To mitigate these risks, service providers should partner with innovative technology companies focused on specific OTT applications, with proven products and without any competitive threat. A number of service providers around the world have successfully adopted this strategy and are working with companies like HyperOffice. A provider of cloud based UCC, Social Collaboration, Federated Collaboration and Mobility, HyperOffice enables service providers to roll out high margin, private labeled cloud services deployed in the service provider infrastructure, HyperOffice infrastructure or any third party.

This post answers common questions people have about the capabilities of an intranet software, and explains how HyperOffice can serve many of these needs. This is part 3 of the “What..” series. You can find parts 1 and 2 here and here.

What are the benefits of an intranet software?

You might want to look at my infographic to get an answer to that question. In short, the benefits you derive are - improve productivity by providing all your employee tools in one place, spur collaboration between team members, and improve knowledge management by capturing all important information in one place.

Do I need an intranet, or an enterprise social network?

The distinctions between enterprise social networks and intranets and fast disappearing with the advent of “social intranets“. However, if you still want to make a choice between one or the other, it would depend on your objectives. An intranet software lets you deeply customize your collaboration environment for specific audiences, and present each piece of information in context. An enterprise social network on the other hand, is a very efficient way to encourage team members to communicate and share information with each other.

What is an alternative to Sharepoint for building an intranet?

HyperOffice has been positioned as a “Sharepoint alternative” for years. It is completely web based, a lot simpler than Sharepoint, brings the same collaboration features, and lets you publish highly customized intranet pages to present your productivity tools and information.

What is a good intranet software for a mid sized company?

HyperOffice is one of the most robust intranet software for a mid sized company. It isn’t as complicated and expensive as Sharepoint, and doesn’t require specialized staff to implement and maintain. A company with a small or no IT department can implement it within days. At the same time, it brings the depth of functionality and customization that one expects from mature enterprise solutions.

What is a good cloud based intranet software?

HyperOffice is completely cloud based. Just get online, and you can build a completely customized company intranet with more than 10 social and collaboration tools.

Continuing from my last post (about the common questions about project management HyperOffice features answer), this post is about common document sharing questions that our document management capabilities answer. Do you have any of the following questions?

What is a cloud based document management software like Sharepoint, but cheaper and simpler?

HyperOffice has been called a “Sharepoint Antidote” at Huffington Post for a reason. You get the same document management capabilities - online document storage/sharing/collaboration, version control, permissions, comments, notifications. Plus you get other features you associate with SharePoint - intranets, calendars, projects, forums, social. But HyperOffice is completely online, offers an exceptionally simple and pleasing experience, and is designed for your SMB pocket! See how HyperOffice compares with Sharepoint in detail.

What is a good web app to share documents like Word, PDF, Powerpoint?

HyperOffice lets you share documents online irrespective of file type - Word, PDF, Powerpoint or any other. Just upload your documents, and your teams anywhere in the world have instant access. You can even work together on these files.

What is a good document management solution for teams?

HyperOffice was designed for teams. You can upload files in shared online document folders, and everyone in the team has instant access. HyperOffice also has collaboration features like version control, web folders, comments and notifications to enable teams to work together on documents. Permissions at the level of folder, sub folder, and down to the file ensure that you can finely manage access rights.

What online document storage system supports WebDAV?

HyperOffice does. You can easily connect to your documents stored online on our servers directly from from your desktop. It is a great way to access, edit and work together on files without having to use the web browser.

What is a web based document management system for a large amount of files?

HyperOffice has large clients who store and manage tens of thousands of files online through our system.

If Newton were still alive, he would have trouble communicating his ideas online. Sure, he could have described his laws, but at soon as he tried typing out the equations, they would have looked like this:

F = G[m1*m2/r(2)]

As you can see, communicating online is not amenable to mathematical equations. That’s where MathType comes in. MathType is a powerful interactive equation editor that lets you create mathematical notation for word processing, web pages, desktop publishing, presentations etc. With MathType, typing equations is simple.

And now MathType supports HyperOffice. With MathType, HyperOffice users can type out mathematical equations in email, notes and forum discussions.

So, scientists, mathematicians, finance folks and general lovers of equations – collaborate away!