Central Desktop Squares up to Google

By Greg McNevin

August 6, 2008: The online desktop battle is heating up with another company, Central Desktop, lining up to take on Google and Microsoft with its SMB Web collaboration software.

One of a multitude of challengers, Central Desktop is taking aim at the market currently dominated by Microsoft Sharepoint and Google Apps, and is doing it by claiming that it provides greater collaboration options than Google, with a smaller application footprint than Sharepoint.

With its latest release, Central Desktop says it has added time tracking, support and help desk applications to its offering, as well as a new database API that enables data to be integrated into the platform from other enterprise applications.

The company says this lets business users manage all of their daily business activities from anywhere at anytime from a single Web location. Central Desktop claims the platform delivers a 30 percent increase in team productivity while decreasing the total cost of doing business.

“Having an application that makes connecting to content as easy as connecting to people is a real step forward. No longer do you have to bring up multiple applications to access corporate data and share it with one or more people within a common context like Central Desktop,” said David Coleman, Founder and Managing Director of Collaborative Strategies.

In addition to the new API, the latest incarnation of the offering includes an extension of user profiles for creating custom, searchable fields and links to external profile data from social networks such as LinkedIn and Facebook, helping companies take advantage of social networking services many are still wary of.

“The Web application market is exploding,” said Isaac Garcia, CEO and Co-Founder, Central Desktop. “And though we already have the majority of online tools for collaborating on work as a part of the Central Desktop platform, users in a variety of industries need additional support to track-time, manage service and support, as well as bring together other industry specific functions into their daily business communications and collaboration efforts.”

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