Choosing An Online Collaboration Suite For Your Small Business

Laurie McCabe’s Blog: Choosing An Online Collaboration Suite For Your Small Business

In this third part of a three-part series, Laurie McCabe discusses the features and criteria that differentiate competing online collaboration suites appropriate for SMBs.

Because the need to collaborate is fundamental to all businesses, many vendors see collaboration suites as an irresistable opportunity to expand their market footprint.

“As the cloud-based computing model has evolved, both traditional collaboration giants, such as IBM and Microsoft, who have long offered on-premise solutions, and a myriad of cloud-centric players have launched integrated online collaboration suite solutions designed to appeal to SMB needs and budgets.

The SMB Group recently conducted in-depth study, Moving Beyond Email: The Era of SMB Online Collaboration Suites, to compare eight online collaboration suite vendors, including Google Apps for Business, HyperOffice, IBM LotusLive, Microsoft BPOS, OnePlace, Salesforce Chatter, VMWare Zimbra, and Zoho Business. While all of these vendors agree on the benefits of integrated approach, they don’t always agree on what to include in the core suite. For instance…”