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By Edward J. Correia

A true team player

The CRN Test Center examined the cloud-based HyperOffice Collaboration Suite at the invitation of company executives— examining the solution through a free, online trial.We found it provides many basic pro- ductivity and communication tools: e-mail, calendaring, task creation and tracking, and contact management.

But HyperOffice doesn’t stop there. It delivers value in how it turns personal productivity into team productivity. HyperOffice provides ultra-easy sharing and collaboration func- tions for each aspect of its suite, turning its browser-based console into a collaboration command center. Here are some examples of what we liked:

• The suite provides an administrator with an intuitive, easy-to-use console for adding or deleting members, and managing their access to content and data.

• Tools, including wiki and intranet page creation and management, are dead-on simple but effective.

• HyperOffice did the heavy lifting with intranet-page creation tools for each member in a group. For example, it allows for objects to be dragged and dropped onto an individual member page for quick construction of an internal site for sharing with the team.

HyperOffice must compete with Microsoft’s SharePoint (both on-premise and hosted), LotusLive, Google Apps and the free-and- pay service Zoho. To measure its effectiveness in comparison to the competition, we needed to examine the cost and complexity it creates compared with the others. HyperOffice pricing begins at a five-user plan at $44.95 per month—meaning the $8.99 monthly user cost is competitive.As user numbers scale up, pricing per user scales down; for 250 users, the user monthly cost is $6.25—even more competitive.

For VARs, HyperOffice provides up to 50 percent margins on seat sales, and notes that services like portal customization can carry 100 percent margin. HyperOffice also provides training, second- level tech support and marketing support.