With all the clatter about the new enterprise collaboration platforms from big players like Salesforce.com‘s Chatter, Cisco‘s Quad, and SAP‘s StreamWork, we thought it would be a good time to look at a few smaller players doing big things: Feng Office, MangoSpring and we+.
Feng Office
Feng Office is a Uruguay based company developing open source collaboration tools. Begun as an academic project based on the final open-source version of ActiveCollab, Feng Office was originally released as OpenGoo in 2007.
FengOffice features documents, projects, calendars, contacts, and multiple work spaces. Although it includes online Google Docs like word processor and presentation apps, it doesn’t include a spreadsheet app. It also lacks a status update/microblogging feature – something that’s quickly becoming a “must have” feature for enterprise collaboration.
Feng Office offers three versions of its software:
- Feng Sky – The hosted version.
- Feng Onsite – The onsite version, obviously, which includes support.
- Feng Community – A free version, offered with no dedicated support.
MangoSpring
This Bellevue, WA based company claims to have accumulated over one million users since it launched in 2007.
MangoSpring offers several apps all built on its collaboration platform Engage. MangoSpring Collaboration Suite brings together all the company’s apps, plus a few 3rd party apps built on the company’s open API. MangoSpring have released iPhone app, and have Android and BlackBerry apps on the way.
One particularly interesting offering from MangoSpring is the innovation management app MangoIdeas. MangoIdeas allows employees to submit, discuss and search ideas in a centralized location, enabling staff to manage an idea’s life cycle from idea to project.
MangoSpring’s clients include Intuit, Minerva Networks, and Texas State University-San Marcos.
we+
we+ is the product of Italian company Yooplus. Most of its clients are Italian SMBs, but it has managed to land a couple big customers: Fiat Group and Loescher Editore.
we+’s features include project management, blogs and wikis. It is availble as either a SaaS or an onsite solution, and boasts extensive customization features – both visually and technically. Yooplus says we+ can be integrated with other web apps, databases, and traditional collaboration tools like e-mail.
Although it has a status update feature, there doesn’t seem to be an activity stream.
Conclusion
It may seem crazy to compete with so many established players, but these companies are showing that even if they can’t dominate a space, there are still opportunities to grow profitable businesses based around solid technologies (much as ZoHo has done).