Quebec-based cloud service provider SherWeb has launched a Microsoft Exchange powered cloud office suite aimed at resellers looking to provide their customers more functionality that what Office 365 can offer.
SherWeb said its SkyOffice 2013 suite goes beyond simple email to include real-time communication and collaboration, such as IM, video conferencing, simultaneous editing of documents and more. The solution, which resellers can white label as their own, also comes with a partner program which the company claims to provide the highest margins in the industry.
Mathieu Leblanc
“While SkyOffice shares some of the same base product functionality as Office 365, SherWeb’s partner benefits go well beyond that of Microsoft,” Mathieu Leblanc, director of strategic partners at SherWeb, told CDN. “Our partners have the freedom to set their own pricing, earn up to 20 per cent bonus discounts on top of our industry leading margins and are equipped with all the necessary tools to rebrand our offering. Partners can even make pure profit on migration and onboarding, two added-value services that SherWeb performs free of charge, from any environment.”
Office 365 is Microsoft’s subscription-based online office and software services suite built around the Office platform. Launched in 2011, it was originally designed to provide hosted email, social networking and collaboration and cloud storage for businesses. It includes hosted versions of Microsoft Exchange, Lync, SharePoint, OfficeWeb along with Office desktop applications.
Leblanc characterizes SkyOffice as a complete hosted email and collaboration solution that “begins where Microsoft Office 365 ends.”
It also features hosted Exchange 2013, Hosted SharePoint 2013, Hosted Lync 2013 and SkyNox 2013 (online backup and recovery) in an enterprise-grade communications and collaboration solution but provides additional services as well.
For example, while both SkyOffice and Office 365 provider a choice of 25GB or unlimited Exchange mailbox size, SkyOffice provides users with public folders while Office 365 does not.
SkyOffice also assisted and self-migration as well as 24/7/365 migration support with its basic plan.
Office 365’s P1 plan is limited to 50 users but SkyOffice has no user limit.
Partners who chose not to white label their offering can elect to have SherWeb provide customer support at no extra cost. SkyOffice plans have no minimum or maximum seat caps. Partners are also free to mix-and-match plans with no annual contracts or commitments, allowing them to easily build tailored offerings for their customers.
“SkyOffice provides the opportunity to mix-and-match plans,” he said. “Partners can extend any plan to any organization and there are not year-long plans it’s month-to-month.”
He also said that partners can guarantee their customers that data will be stored inside Canadian borders.
Partners selling SkyOffice also benefit from SherWeb’s financially-backed 99.999 per cent uptime service level agreement, SOC 2 Type II-certified security and free, dedicated sales and technical training.