HyperOffice to Take on Google Apps, Microsoft Web Apps?

By David Roe

Since HyperOffice went into beta last December with a new version of its cloud suite it has been threatening to take the collaboration thunder in the SMB space from Microsoft and Google. In the meantime Google outlines how much it is worth to the SMB market.

HyperOffice to Rumble With Google, Microsoft?

Finally, after six months of testing by thousands of users and numerous enhancements, HyperOffice is making its cloud collaboration suite generally available to SMBs.

While the release will give small companies the ability to collaborate with inexpensive and accessible tools, the release should also stir up the already turbulent and cloud app invested waters which Google and Microsoft (news, site) (with its upcoming Web Apps release) have been fighting in for months.

The new HyperOffice release, which can be up and running in less than an hour, gives users a wide range of any SaaS business applications including forums, wikis, intranets, extranets, email, project portals and web conferencing.

In the PR accompanying the release there are numerous testaments to how good this new version is —why wouldn’t there be?. But even taking that into account there is no getting away from the fact that it can do anything Microsoft Outlook can, centralizes and secures data online, and offers multiple methods of remote access. And then there is the mobile version for Blackberry — HyperSynch.

And HyperOffice is making no secret of its intentions towards its competitors. At the time of the beta launch its president, Farzin Arsanjani, said this of the competition:

Google Apps has reached more than two million businesses that recognize the value of messaging and collaboration capabilities delivered online. HyperOffice is distinctively positioned as SMBs discover hosted business collaboration services and realize they require a more comprehensive suite of tools …”

The new platform has been built from the ground up with Ajax, Java and an array of other Web 2.0 technologies to improve performance, scalability and security and will cost in the region of US $7 per user per month.