Oct 07 1 comments
Mobile Collaboration, Uncategorized

How to Sync iPhone with Outlook

While it makes sense to take a strategic approach towards collaboration software, as a tool which will have far reaching effects on how a business operates, oftentimes, businesses opt for collaboration software in response to an immediate problem. This is a first of a series of informative articles we will feature on the HyperOffice blog that deal with common problems that businesses face,  and how they can be solved by HyperOffice as well as other solutions.

As iPhone becomes popular as a business tool, employees quite naturally want to be able to access and sync Outlook and iPhone mail, contacts and calendars. There are three main ways to get this done:

1. Wired sync using iTunes

2. Wireless sync using a web service like HyperOffice

3. Sync using an enterprise messaging server like Exchange

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Wired Sync Using iTunes.

1. This is applicable if you are an iTunes user. You need to follow the following steps.

2. Make sure the iTunes plugin is enabled in Outlook

3. Connect your iPhone to your computer

4. iTunes should open up automatically

5. You need to open the Info tab in iTunes, and select “Outlook” from the “sync contacts with:” and “sync calendars with:” drop down.

6. Click the “Sync” button

Limitations

- You need to connect your iPhone to your computer everytime you need to sync.

- It is only one-way sync, meaning your Outlook information will appear on your iPhone, but not vice versa.

- Although iTunes has a “sync email” option, it only syncs email settings and not messages. To sync email between iPhone and Outlook, you need to set up the same IMAP account on both.

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Using a web service like HyperOffice.

If your SMB does not have, and can not afford an enterprising messaging server like Exchange, a web service like HyperOffice is the ideal option. HyperOffice is a cloud based service that syncs with both Outlook and iPhone, and hence acts as a bridge that allows bi-directional sync between Outlook and iPhone. This offers a number of benefits. Firstly, you don’t need to install any dedicated servers or software. Secondly, you are not tethered to a single computer, and your information is synched wirelessly over the air in real time even when you are travelling. Plus, HyperOffice also includes support for a wide range of other device, and allows you to sync Outlook with devices like BlackBerry, Android, and Nokia etc. You need to take the following steps:

1. Sign up online for HyperOffice and log in

2. Set up synching between HyperOffice and Outlook using the HyperShare add-in.

3. Go to the “Settings” tab, and then “Mobile Sync”

4. Click Setup Phone, and Select the manufacturer, model & carrier from and enter phone number. Click continue.

5. In this step, enter code received on your mobile device and click on verify.

6. On the next screen, select data items to sync.

7. Once HyperOffice is set up, you now need to set up your iPhone. First you click on settings on your iPhone and scroll down & tap Mail, Contacts, Calendars.

8. Tap Add Account & select Microsoft Exchange as the type of account.

9. Enter HyperOffice email address and the password.

10. In the new server field enter hypersync.hyperoffice.com and hit next and select the services (Mail, Contacts, Calendars) you wish to sync.

Read more, or contact us for more information..

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Using an Enterprise Messaging Server like Microsoft Exchange

This option is applicable if you have Microsoft Exchange (2003, 2007, 2010) set up at your company, and powering Outlook. iPhone syncs with Exchange through the ActiveSync protocol. You need to take the following steps:

1. Set up your Outlook account using Exchange

2. On your iPhone screen, click “settings”

3. Click on mail, contacts, calendars

4. Click on “add account” and select “Exchange”

5. On the next screen, fill out your Email, Domain, Username, Password, and Description.

6. If auto-discovery is enabled in Exchange, the next screen will be automatically prepopulated. If not, you need to fill out the server information, and click next.

7. Now iPhone displays a list of data types you want to sync – mail, contacts and calendars. Click on “save” to complete the process.

Limitations

- You need to have Exchange Server installed, which is typically an enterprise product costing up to thousands of dollars. This is not an optimal solution for SMBs.

- If you want to extend syncing capabilities beyond iPhone, Exchange does not support non ActiveSync devices.

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Sep 21 0 comments
What's New

HyperOffice is movin’ on up!

We are pleased to announce that HyperOffice is moving from 6101, Executive Boulevard, Rockville, Maryland to a bigger, better space at 30 West Gude Drive, Rockville.

A bit of remembrance

It is not without nostalgia and a slightly heavy heart that we bid adieu to our office at Executive Boulevard. To imagine as empty the place which saw constant buzz and chatter – of sales delivering their pitches, the management clinching their deals, support dealing with customers – some irate and some amicable, repartee going back and forth over the cabins, and a few jolts (remember the recent earthquake).

This office was home to HyperOffice for more than four years, through a crucial period of our development. We matured as individuals and professionals, as a company, and our industry matured from a nascent only-heard-at-tech-conferences market to the next current big thing in business IT – the cloud. It was also a period of great growth and wide recognition for us as one of the most well established vendors in the space – a “market pillar” as a recent Info Tech Research study called HyperOffice.

An exciting future awaits!

But the truth is, the old office was simply starting to burst at its seams. It was no longer large enough to contain our fast expanding team, and our ambitions. We all love our larger, snazzier new office, with a little bit of sci fi décor thrown in. It is here we hope to write the most exciting chapter in our history yet. As a sign of things to come, we have already landed some important customer wins in the first couple of days here, and one can feel the energy of this “new beginning” reverberate through the new office.

Accordingly, our primary contact number has changed from 301 255 0018 to 240 428 1700. The old number will continue to be operational for a few months before we rest it. Everyone’s extensions remain the same. Our toll free number 1.800.434.5136 also remains the same.

Our new address is 30 West Gude Dr, Suite 150, Rockville, MD 20850. That is the place to direct your correspondence, fan mail, or personal visits in the future :) . 

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Sep 13 3 comments
Cloud Computing, Collaboration Software, Press Coverage, What's New

HyperOffice Recognized as Collaboration Market “Market Pillar” in Info Tech Research Study

Info Tech Research Group just put out a market study titled “Vendor Landscape Plus: Collaboration Platforms”. Info-Tech Research Group’s well known Vendor Landscape reports help enterprise IT decision-makers identify a short list of vendors for their IT programs depending on their needs.  Vendors listed in the study make the cut only after fulfilling rigorous criteria.

We are pleased to report that HyperOffice is one of the solutions Info Tech covered this year, and has been recognized as a “market pillar” in the collaboration market. This is testimony to HyperOffice’s more than 10 years of experience and prominence in the collaboration market.

The is one of the most comprehensive studies on the collaboration software market in recent times. Apart from profiling prominent vendors in the market, it includes larger insights on emerging themes and trends in the collaboration market, maps user needs to type of solution, and includes primary end user research as well. One of the things that stood out for us is the growing importance of “social collaboration”.

It is a paid report, but we recommend it highly to analysts, writers and others who are interested in larger trends in the collaboration market, as well as to end users who want to assess collaboration vendors and chart out an implementation strategy.

Please do visit the Info Tech site and check out the study.

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Aug 25 0 comments
Cloud Computing, Collaboration Software, Online Collaboration, Press Coverage, What's New

Eminent industry analyst compares HyperOffice with Office 365, Google Apps and others

You hear us gush about HyperOffice’s socks-rocking capabilities all the time don’t you? But we are supposed to do that right?

How about hearing about HyperOffice from an eminent industry analyst who has been observing, writing about, and commenting on the information technology industry for more than 30 years? You can bet on one thing – they know their stuff.

We are super glad to tell our readers that Amy Wohl, widely known analyst and commentator on the cloud and collaboration markets just published a whitepaper comparing HyperOffice and other prominent solutions in the collaboration market.

Apart from a main feature comparison chart, Amy identifies other important parameters and themes in the collaboration market, and how different solutions compare of them. Amy has identified four major areas that companies looking for collaboration software must consider.

Features: What is the feature range and depth. Does the suite have the features you want?

Mobile Collaboration: Companies are increasingly looking to enable their mobile workforce with access to important business information on their iPhone, iPad, BlackBerry and other mobile devices. Does the solution support the features and devices you are looking at?

Social Collaboration: The “Enterprise 2.0” debate has been around for 2 years now, and the benefits of “social” tools in companies have been widely accepted. Does the collaboration suite you are looking at have social tools like profiles, wikis, and activity streams?

Integration: Since many collaboration solutions in the market have been built through acquisitions, it is important how well different features of collaboration software play together, as well as integration with commonly used software. How well integrated is the product? Does it work together with other software you use in your company – MS Word, Outlook etc?

To see how HyperOffice compares on these factors, please read Amy’s white paper – HyperOffice and the Online Collaboration Marketplace.

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Aug 17 1 comments
Cloud Computing, Collaboration Software, Uncategorized, What's New

Active Directory and the Cloud

Active Directory is a directory service widely used in organizations to implement policy controls and manage access to company IT resources.  It simplifies things for administrators as well as users by centralizing creation of usernames and passwords. Administrators are saved the effort of setting up usernames and passwords for every person for every computer, software and piece of information; and keeping these policy controls updated. On the other hand users can use the same login credentials to access all the network resources relevant to them.

However, things have changed in the era of cloud software. Employees need access not just to systems and information within the company network, but also to numerous cloud solutions which are hosted on the servers of the solution vendor.

However, the need for integration with Active Directory is as pertinent today as it ever was. Now that many business critical on-premise software are now moving to the cloud – email, accounting, collaboration, CRM etc – managing usernames, passwords and policies for each of these systems separately is highly inefficient. And the more cloud systems a company implements, the greater the number of users, the harder it is for administrators.

Since cloud based software have found wide acceptance in businesses only in the last couple of years, it is only now that vendors are considering advanced technical requirements such as integration between Active Directory and their cloud software.

At HyperOffice, we are fully appreciative this requirement, especially given the strategic nature of our collaboration software. We conduct on-demand Active Directory integrations based on the specific needs of our users. We have developed special tools, which let us do anything from simple Active Directory integrations, to highly customized integrations which meet enhanced security requirements, or let administrators trigger specific actions within HyperOffice right from Active Directory.

We just put out a white paper discussing in detail the relevance of Active Directory to the cloud, and presenting HyperOffice as a case study of the various degrees of integration between Active Directory and cloud software.

You can read it at “Active Directory and the Cloud”.

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Jul 28 1 comments
Collaboration Software, Mobile Collaboration, Uncategorized

HyperOffice is an iCloud alternative for team collaboration

iCloud is great news

iCloud is great news for the cloud industry as a whole. As everyone knows, the genius of Steve Jobs is to show everyone the importance of “sexy” in technology (for lack of a better word) – take an existing technology, and make it so compelling, so beautiful, that people can’t wait to lay their hands on that sleek shiny new thing.  He did that with iPhone, and repeated it with iPad.

The same could well happen with iCloud. The cloud has been around in the consumer market for more than a decade, and the business world has finally embraced it in the last couple of years. But Steve Jobs’ visibility and marketing genius could make the “cloud” meme so commonplace, that no cloud vendor ever has to lose hair again trying to explain to a prospect what the cloud is.

However, iCloud is not a team tool, nor is it intended to be.

iCloud is not for collaboration

Firstly, iCloud is designed as a personal data management tool. You have a personal account, which you use to access data across the iPhone, iPad and Mac. It simply has no “sharing” or “groupware” functionality.

Secondly, iCloud is not a traditional “cloud” solution. It has no web-browser access option, which is the cornerstone of most cloud solutions. All data (music, mail, apps) must be accessed on local applications on the iPhone, iPad or the Mac desktop. Therefore, in effect, the cloud is invisible in the background, and it pushes and synchronizes data between local applications. It has been argued that this model is simply not suitable for collaboration, which is more about everyone accessing a common instance of data on the cloud and working on it. In the “sync” model, an instance of the data is pushed locally, and changes synced back to the master copy on the cloud. The more the number of users working on that bit of data, the more complex the situation is.

Thirdly, iCloud restricts users to the Apple ecosystem. It effectively excludes users who prefer to have online access to their data, access it on their PC, or want to access it on one of the myriad mobile devices around in addition to iPhone and iPad.

HyperOffice lets you collaborate on Apple devices

However, quite undeniably, there is a segment of users and businesses who work primarily in the Apple environment, and want a solution that will let them share data in the Apple ecosystem. At HyperOffice, we have made a constant attempt to make our solutions compatible with an ever larger number of popular business environments. We have kept a constant eye on various Apple devices as they have gained importance in the businesses world, and continued to add support.

HyperOffice is the ideal solution for businesses looking to access and share corporate email, contacts, calendars and other information across their iPhone, iPad and Mac devices, and beyond.

Here is how HyperOffice supports each of these devices:

iPhone: HyperOffice support all mobile devices based on ActiveSync. This means iPhone users can push and wirelessly sync their business email, contacts and calendars on their devices. Since HyperOffice is a team solution, users can even share iPhone contacts and calendars with other team members. Anytime you create a meeting or edit a contact, you can choose to let everyone in your team know immediately.

Plus, HyperOffice is optimized for access from the iPhone Chrome browser. Users can access advanced HyperOffice collaboration software tools like shared documents, projects, forums, and workspaces right from their iPhone.

iPad: In addition to iPhone, HyperOffice also supports synching with the native mail, contact and calendar apps just like iCloud. Only, you can even share this information with team members. Besides, users can access HyperOffice features from their iPad Chrome browser.

Mac: HyperOffice allows synching with the native mail, contacts and calendars of Mac using a third party tool called SyncJE. Entourage in turn, is designed to automatically synchronize with these native Mac apps. In effect, Mac users can access their corporate mail, calendars and contacts from the native apps of Mac or entourage, and keep them in sync across devices.

Beyond Apple: Unlike iCloud, HyperOffice by no means restricts users to sharing and collaborating on information only in the Mac universe. All of HyperOffice’s features can be accessed from any PC or Mac web browser in the world. Support for mobile devices is also not restricted to iPhone and iPad, and fully extends to phones like Android, Nokia, Windows Mobile and even BlackBerry. Plus, people who are addicted to Outlook, may continue to use Outlook to access and share mail, contacts, calendars and tasks using our Outlook synchronization functionality.

So, if you are a Apple die hard, and looking to fully leverage your shiny Apple gadget to collaborate with teams, do hit us up.

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Jun 17 0 comments
Cloud Computing, Collaboration Software

How to introduce collaboration software in your business – Best practices

Although simplicity is the hallmark of modern cloud collaboration software, the decision to implement collaboration software in the company is not to be taken lightly. This seriousness is apt given the strategic nature of collaboration technology – while most software are used by some of the people in the organization some of the time, collaboration software is by used by most of the people (if not all) much of the time (and extends to partners and clients).

Collaboration (or working together) is at the heart of what every organization does, and collaboration software can be thought of as the lubricant which ensures that the cogs and gears of business run smoothly. Just as the foundation of a building determines the strength of the super structure, the rigor and diligence with which collaboration software is implemented goes a long way to determine the success of the initiative.

HyperOffice has observed, guided and conducted tens of thousands of collaboration software implementations over the years. Here is what we’ve learned:

Planning – Planning begins even before you purchase a collaboration solution. Planning encompasses all other parts of ensuring implementation success. If it’s worth doing, it should be part of your plan.  Key points to consider in planning are:

Study needs and define objectives – The first question to ask is – what are you looking to accomplish? – Organize documents and enable remote access? Enable travelling teams with mobile email? Centralize corporate information and processes in an intranet? Once the objectives are defined, the picture becomes clearer – what data, systems and people will be involved. Objectives become the guiding light for everything that follows. When objectives are unclearly defined – “to enhance company collaboration” – the initiative tends to meander.

Create implementation roadmap – Consider the following things:

o   Migration

o   Configuration – What will the structure of the solution be, what members will be assigned to each group, the level of access for different members and other policy controls.

o   Implementation Phases – Rather than throwing the collaboration kitchen sink at the organization, a phased approach to implementation ensures that collaboration tools are smoothly incorporated into company processes. Moreover, collaboration tools one at a time are easier for users to digest than having to learn the entire solution all at once. The sequence of tools implemented can be based on the priorities of the business needs addressed.

People – People are critical to implementation success. You need to identify all the stakeholders, persons responsible for implementation and use, and identify “champions” within specific groups who drive adoption.

Careful migration – Migration is an extremely important part of the implementation.  You will likely be moving hundreds if not thousands of email accounts from a legacy system, or terabytes of documents from individual computers or network drives. A migration conducted hastily could result in disaster like data loss, or cause problems which surface only much later. A careful analysis needs to be done of the data involved, the source and the target systems, and all possible interactions. Based on that appropriate tools need to be selected and migration conducted according to a set plan.

Training – The simplicity of use of collaboration software does not undermine the importance of training. The people who lead the collaboration software initiative sometimes tend to make wrong assumptions about end users. What may be glaringly self-obvious to you may not be so to others – some people DO NOT have what you would define as “basic” tech savvy. Plus, don’t underestimate the tendency to resist change. Training does not have to be simply about educating about product features. It is a great opportunity to get user buy in. Lay out the benefits of the system, and explain how it will help employees do their day to day work better. Separate trainings need to be conducted for administrators and users given different degrees of engagement with the software.

Create context for success – It is folly to think that technology on its own can change set ways of doing thing. Much has been said about creating a context to ensure technology success, and it holds even truer of collaboration software, given its strategic nature. Before users get into the equilibrium of using the collaboration software in their day to day operations, they need to be guided and their behaviour reinforced. Some things you can do to create the right context:

Management backing: The management needs to send out strong messages about the importance of collaboration software to the organization and lead by example.

Lay out formal processes: Lay out formal procedures for data handling which make the collaboration software part of the process.

Marketing campaign: Implementation should be accompanied with an internal “marketing campaign” of sorts.

Reward good behaviour: Reinforce positive behaviour with recognition, praise or material rewards.

Once the implementation is undertaken with this seriousness, the collaboration initiative will surely soar on its own with minimal interference.  Given the payoff, it makes sense to involve an expert in the process who can guide the implementation. For companies that may require such assistance, HyperOffice offers a variety of professional services ranging from consulting, migration, training and customization.

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May 31 2 comments
Business Productivity Online Suite, Collaboration Software

A call to Office 365 and Google Apps customers

Rough week for Google and Microsoft

Over the past few weeks, Google and Microsoft customers experienced widely publicized downtime issues. On May 10th, some BPOS customers had to go without mail for as many as 6-9 hours, and then again on May 12th for up to 3 hours. As if that was not enough, Microsoft also experienced problems with its DNS (Domain Name Service) on 12th May, which prevented users from accessing Outlook Web Access hosted in the Americas for around 4 hours, and partially impacted some functionality of Microsoft Outlook and Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync devices. And it doesn’t end yet….Again on May 19th some Microsoft customers complained of email delays from 15 minutes to one hour. Microsoft attributed the issue to “email delays caused by mail flow issues” which affected around 1% of users. 1% may sound insignificant but I bet it’s not so insignificant if you are a part of that 1%.

Update (9 Sept 2011) – Even though Microsoft promised that the downtime issues would go away once users migrated from BPOS to Office 365, that has been far from true. Within a couple of months of Office 365 being made public, it has already had two downtime episodes.

Google on the other hand, experienced its own set of problems. Users of Google Blogger, Google’s blog platform, experienced downtime for more than 20 hours over 12th and 13th May. Google Blogger is not exactly a business product, but Gmail, which is used by many businesses as their primary email system, when down for around 40,000 users (including paid users) for over 30 hours late in February.

Is the cloud the problem?

A portion of the media is up in arms and interpreting this as an inherent problem with the “cloud” model. But as the Microsoft problems persisted, it became evident that the problems were Microsoft specific, and these arguments died down.

Affected customers, understandably, have reacted with extreme frustration. Imagine trying to get business done with your email unavailable for hours at end.  Many customers have expressed their intentions to move off Microsoft or Google, or move off cloud based systems altogether and fall back on legacy email servers.

Or is it a lack of commitment?

How come, with all its financial might and resources, Microsoft still ends up having a worse track record than companies much smaller? At HyperOffice, we have never experienced a data breach, and have always kept well within our 99.9% uptime guarantee. Maybe it is indicative of a lack of real commitment to the cloud market, irrespective of stated public positions. That might well be the case, given that the primary profit churners for both Google and Microsoft are other services or product lines. Microsoft gets less than 5% of its revenues from cloud services, a vast majority contributed by on premise product lines like Windows OS, Exchange, SharePoint, MS Office etc.

Google’s gets more than 90% of its revenues from advertising and it seems like they are entering a new line of business (mobile payments as of last week) every week and shutting down businesses that don’t meet their strategic objectives (google wave with over one million subscribers) on a regular basis. It is understandable that they would be focused on the areas where they make  the majority of their profits and revenue. .

HyperOffice is a reliable alternative

We would like to reach out to all the Google Apps and BPOS customers who have decided to look for alternate solutions to consider HyperOffice. Here is what we offer you:

Experience – We have been offering web based business solutions for over 10 years now, and are one of the pioneers in cloud communication and collaboration. HyperOffice is one of the most well recognized and respected solutions in the space.

Superior reliability – We have an impeccable record in terms of uptime and data security. We have always kept well within our SLAs and 99.9% uptime guarantee, and never compromised customer data in our history.

Focus – Our cloud communication and collaboration solutions are our sole focus, and our resources and attention are not dispersed across multiple products and markets.

Responsiveness – We bring you a responsive support team, and you always have real people to talk to in case of problems. Our lean corporate structure allows us to be extremely nimble in response to issues.

Best in class technology – Finally, we bring you one of the broadest, deepest, most well integrated technologies in the communication and collaboration market developed organically over many years in response to the day to day operational needs of our customers.

Look at a comparison between HyperOffice, Google Apps and Microsoft BPOS

We are looking forward to hear from you.

May 19 1 comments
Mobile Collaboration, Uncategorized, What's New

HyperSync is now HyperMobile!

Given the growing importance of mobility in HyperOffice capabilities, we thought it was time to give our mobile sync services a slight image makeover. So what you have hitherto affectionately referred to as HyperSync, gets the crisp, all-new, and descriptive title of HyperMobile. The same beloved product, but in new garb. There are a couple of reasons for the change:

HyperSync had the potential of being confused with the other “sync” services HyperOffice provides, namely, Outlook synchronization and the ability to sync with Mac mail and contacts. We felt that “HyperMobile” was a lot more descriptive, in that it makes clear the mobile specific capabilities of HyperOffice.

This is a great opportunity to re-emphasize our commitment to support an ever greater range of “mobile” features, and help popularize the concept of “mobile collaboration”. Mobile collaboration does not refer merely to the ability to collaborate on mobile phones, but reflects the emergence of new age devices – mobile phones, tablets, netbooks – and workers’ desire to access and collaborate on business information independent of device. Workers want to instantly collaborate and access information across all these devices depending on where they are – at office, at home, at a client site or on the road – without being tied to a single one. That is the spirit of “mobile collaboration”.

HyperMobile already offers powerful mobility features  including the ability to push and sync mail, contacts, calendars and tasks on their devices; share this information with colleagues; push information from third party sources like Gmail, Yahoo mail, and Hotmail ; and support for most major mobile devices. We plan to keep building on these capabilities and exciting new mobility features form a prominent part of our product roadmap. Keep following us to keep updated!

Apr 20 5 comments
Business Productivity Online Suite, Cloud Computing, Collaboration Software

Microsoft Office 365 : An assessment

Yesterday, Microsoft announced the public beta of Office 365, its web based communication, collaboration and productivity software, and successor to Microsoft BPOS.

Integrated communication and collaboration is here to stay folks

This announcement, and the enthused industry reaction is another shot in the (already bulging) arm of cloud based software. Take a moment to think – Microsoft, which made billions off on-premise software, is now putting its entire weight behind Office 365, with the certainty of cannibalizing its cash cow on premise software (Exchange, SharePoint, Lync). Microsoft realizes the cloud is where the action is, and wants to be in the thick of it.

Office 365 validates another approach that HyperOffice has been evangelizing for many years – the coming together of communication and collaboration software. Communication and collaboration needs have traditionally been served through separate server based products, but it is increasingly being realized that since these needs are closely connected and overlapping, they are best served through a single software bundle. We used to call this “total collaboration”, but “mobile collaboration” is more apt today, given the importance of mobile access to modern workers.

Microsoft Office 365 vs. HyperOffice Comparison Chart

Against the background of this announcement, we felt it was a great time to compare and contrast our solution to Office 365 and highlight our strengths, especially for the SMB market. We feel that Microsoft Office 365 falls short in certain areas, mainly because it tries to serve multiple segments with the same base suite. Also remember, Office 365 has directly evolved from on premise versions of Exchange, SharePoint and other enterprise server software, and is bound to reflect those antecedents (humans still resemble their simian ancestors don’t they?). Since HyperOffice is designed mainly for SMBs, we have been able to design our product and services with a single minded focus towards SMBs. A feature comparison and reasons why Office 365 may not be ideal for SMBs is as follows:

Office 365 is offered in various flavors, or a “slicing and dicing” of the base suite in various ways in an attempt to serve multiple segments. For our comparison we have chosen Office 365 E1, for mid sized companies, because it is closest to HyperOffice in terms of functionality, price and target market.

SMBs are not second class citizens

Given its enterprise trappings, Microsoft has grossly misread the needs of SMBs in certain areas. For example, its Office 365 P flavor, meant for small businesses upto 50 users has only the self service support option. In our experience, even with a simple solution like HyperOffice, SMB customers need very involved assistance and discipline given the strategic nature of a communication and collaboration software, especially during the implementation phase. Simplicity, of course, is key to day to day usage, but customers expect somebody to be at hand when they have questions or problems, since they may not have in house IT staff.

Integration

Degree of integration is essential to efficient use of a communication and collaboration suite, and garners more user adoption because of the simplified and intuitive experience. However, MS Online Services by their very design are limited in the degree of integration they can offer. Consider this – Office 365 is comprised of Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, Office Web Apps and Lync Online – each also a standalone product. Furthermore, all of the aforementioned solutions are refurbishments of its on premise products (SharePoint, Exchange, Office, Lync) and carry forward the same basic solution design principles. With so many demands on its solutions, Microsoft can never do what we can do – develop a single solution, organically with a single minded focus towards SMBs.

To illustrate, I have listed a few screen shots of Office 365’s interfaces and compared that with HyperOffice’s design. Notice how the button layouts for Office 365 keep changing. You are kept being taken to multiple pages lying on different domains (outlook.com, sharepoint.com, microsoftonline.com). On HyperOffice, all features open within a single page – you.hyperoffice.com.

Also, in HyperOffice, all features lie on the same level (documents, contacts, calendars, sites, mail) and are navigable with a single click from a consistent left navigation – a simple but successful design principle. In Office 365, calendars, contacts and tasks are nestled in, and subordinate to email. At the same time, documents are nestled in, and subordinate to “team sites”. Another aspect of HyperOffice is “interlinking” where any piece of data may be linked to any another piece of data within the system (mails, projects, contacts, calendars, documents, surveys). This allows users to create context around specific tasks, contacts, transactions etc.

Office 365                                                                                           HyperOffice

Mail

5

Calendars

5

Documents

5

Team sites

5

Mobility

At HyperOffice, we have tried to popularize the concept of “mobile collaboration” – integrated communication and collaboration tools with a strong mobility aspect. Again, Microsoft is limited in the devices it can support since it has to be committed to its own protocol – ActiveSync. HyperOffice also supports SyncML devices, which includes a large number of Java phones, as well as devices which base mail, contacts, calendars and tasks on a combination of ActiveSync and SyncML. Both HyperOffice and Office 365 support BlackBerry.We also offer the push email to sms (and vice versa) feature, an innovative feature designed to support basic phones where users can forward emails in their inbox as an sms on their device, and also reply to that email through sms.

Microsoft may push its own agenda

The SMB market demand is for a communication and collaboration suite, which has multiple touch points in organizations, to support and plug with the widest variety of common business devices and software. We have tried to accommodate this with Mac integration, Outlook and Office integration, and widest possible mobile phone support. But since Microsoft doesn’t sell a single technology, but a complete stack of interrelated technologies, there is always the danger that Microsoft may push users towards its own products, and upgrade the entire stack (for example earlier versions of MS Office and Outlook are not supported).

Microsoft’s eminent position in the software industry, and competition in multiple markets may also have an impact on featured offered to users. For example, Office 365 does not support Chrome from competitor Google (apart from Outlook Web App support), even though it is massively popular.

Simplicity

Again, Microsoft’s enterprise trappings, and the fact that Office 365 has evolved from on premise server based products, means that it retains the complexity of its precursors. Although implementation of collaboration software requires discipline because of its strategic nature, it is essential for it to be simple enough for end users to manage their day to day tasks. At HyperOffice, we have always tried to be true to our philosophy of “collaboration made simple”.

Mobility

Office 365 Isn’t Mobile Enough

Tony Bradley

Pcworld.com

Needs more robust mobile integration.

Samara Lynn

Pcmag.com

At HyperOffice, we have tried to popularize the concept of “mobile collaboration” – integrated communication and collaboration tools with a strong mobility aspect. Again, Microsoft is limited in the devices it can support since it has to be committed to its own protocol – ActiveSync. HyperOffice also supports SyncML devices, which includes a large number of Java phones, as well as devices which base mail, contacts, calendars and tasks on a combination of ActiveSync and SyncML. Both HyperOffice and Office 365 support BlackBerry.

We also offer the push email to sms (and vice versa) feature, an innovative feature designed to support basic phones where users can forward emails in their inbox as an sms on their device, and also reply to that email through sms.

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