ContactOffice Launches Public Beta of Web Office Suite

(Note: I’m an advisor to this company but have no financial interests)

ContactOffice has just launched a public beta of its Web Office suite. While there was already a public beta for early testers available since March 2007, not all of the functionalities of the service had been migrated to the new platform up until now. The release comes just in time for the Office 2.0 Conference in San Francisco, where ContactOffice is one of the sponsors. Patrick De Schutter, founder and Managing Director of the company, will be there to present the beta release and to explore potential US partnerships as well as a local sales office. Blognation will be there too.

The new version runs on AJAX and was developed with Google Web Toolkit. There are still some improvements to be done before all existing accounts will be migrated to the new platform, but apart from the task list the developers have managed to get the complete set of features up and running. You can test-drive the new beta here.

ContactOffice was one of the first web-based collaboration & communication tools for businesses. The service centralizes online management of essential business tools like messaging (e-mail, SMS, fax,chat, Skype, etc.), calendaring, contact management, document sharing, bookmarks, notes, forums, wikis, and so on. There’s the usual free and paid packages, but one of the key selling points of ContactOffice is that it also comes in a white-label version which allows organizations to create a customized platform. The service is currently available in English, French, Spanish and Dutch.

Obviously, the company is up to some stiff competition in the Web Office space, not only from Google Apps and Microsoft Office Live, but also from dedicated movers like Zoho, Zimbra and ThinkFree.

ContactOffice was founded in 1999 by the current management team (Patrick De Schutter, Arnaud Huret, Luc Claes and Brice Le Blévennec) and has been able to fund its own growth apart from a small initial capital investment by Groupe Josi back in 2001. The company has been profitable since 2003, and now counts about 350 000 end users (of which 100 000 use the free version). Customers and partners include a number of renowned French schools and universities, and organizations like Mobistar, Electrabel, TNT, Office.com and Suez.

The company will now focus on expanding its customer base by developing its reseller and affiliate channel and by tapping into other regions and language zones, while adding more features to become a fully-fledged virtual office (with text, spreadsheet and presentation processors). The management team is actively looking for external investment to fund its further growth.