Central Desktop Speaks to SMBs (All of Them! Not Just The Small Ones)
November 18, 2008 
5 Comments
Small Business Market
Earlier today, we announced the release of the Enterprise Edition of Central Desktop. I wanted to share some thoughts about why this release is significant to our company and to the market – but before I get into the details of the Enterprise Edition, first, a little background.
Since 2005, Central Desktop has served the SMB market with an emphasis on companies with less than 100 employees. We’ve always emphasized the “S” in SMB. We literally have thousands of small businesses around the world that depend on us and run their business on our online project management platform every day. A quick glance at our Customer Network and you’ll see dozens of success stories across a variety of industries – mostly small businesses.
But, in spite of our small business emphasis, we’ve always attracted larger companies to our platform as well. Some of our deployments within large companies have been pockets and teams of fifty or a few hundred - and we’ve always had a few dozen deployments of global companies with thousands of users.
What we’ve found over the course of this year, though, as the economy continues to drag and as businesses of all sizes look for ways to reduce costs and increase the productivity of their workforce – is that more and more large companies are looking to Central Desktop for their solutions.
Over and over again, we are speaking with department heads within large companies and presidents and owners of mid-sized companies. Generally, these entities are between 100 – 1,000 employees – and are searching for an easy to use, easy to deploy – cost saving solution for their workforce.
So, in response to this growing demand by our customers – we’ve decided to launch an Enterprise Edition of Central Desktop to address this segment of the market. We’d like to address and include the “M” in SMB – a segment of the market that we believe is drastically underserved. These “M”s lie in the often ignored “no man’s land” of the market – not quite small businesses and not quite enterprises. These mid-sized companies and large departments are looking for the same functionality that we provide to our small business customers but also require additional features and functionality that many small businesses don’t need.
For example, due to their limited resources and constrained budgets, small businesses demand quick to deploy and intuitive solutions that eliminate the need to burden staff with administration and training. As a result of Central Desktop’s intuitive interface and ease-of-use, small businesses are confident that their staff will be able to use the product with little to no training and with minimal setup time.
Historically, as project collaboration solutions become more complex in tandem with large deployments, large companies are accustomed to “settling” and “expect” solutions to be difficult to use, resource intensive and burdensome to their workforce.
This should not be the case.
Today, with our Enterprise Edition, mid-sized companies and enterprise departments can enjoy and leverage the same ease-of-use functionality that is usually expected only from small business or consumer-centric software products.
The Central Desktop Enterprise Edition provides the same core collaboration platform that our existing customers are using – but with enterprise enhancements. The Enterprise Edition is aimed at the “M” of SMB – targeting mid-sized companies and departments within larger organizations.
In addition to the core Central Desktop feature set, Enterprise Edition customers will also receive:
Workflow Engine
The powerful and easy-to-use rules-based workflow system integrated into Central Desktop’s file system, databases, time-tracking and help-desk tools enable users to create automated email notifications and tasks for team members to support business processes across markets and functional areas.
Enterprise-Grade Security Pack
The Security Pack empowers IT Departments and Administrators with additional features and tools to ensure that Central Desktop usage conforms to internal, corporate and 3rd party policy compliance. This applies to both companies and organizations that work within industries that require strict security compliance such as, healthcare and financial services as well as business teams within larger organizations that have more stringent requirements enforced by their IT departments (Corporate Governance, HIPAA, etc).
SLA
The Enterprise Edition will include a guaranteed minimum service level of up-time.
Salesforce Integration
Central Desktop’s Salesforce.com integration allows for a single sign-on experience between the two applications, easy member provisioning, lightweight task management and secure extranets to collaborate with external customers, partners and vendors.
API Access
Deeper and unlimited API access for developers and enterprise customers to create custom workflow triggers, business processes and integration with third-party systems.
The Enterprise Edition allows us to provide mid-sized companies with robust collaboration software they require to successfully manage their business without sacrificing security, quality or reliability.
And for our thousands of small business customers, we have no intention of shifting our focus away from them either. We are *very* proud of each of these companies and will continue to provide them with the affordable, feature-rich solutions they require as well. We hope that every one of these small business grow into thriving medium-sized and large companies and that we grow with them every step of the way.
One of the most enduring qualities of TRUE Software-as-a-service, multi-tenant architectures like Central Desktop is its unique ability to serve many, many customers – under a single roof – at affordable prices. Our SaaS-based solution enables us to address thousands of businesses on a single platform – no matter the size of the organization – while still providing the security and reliability they require.
We believe that the SMB market is dramatically under-served. The number of proven, pure SaaS-based software solutions that can scale with a business are few. As a result, we believe that Central Desktop is uniquely positioned to speak to the “S”‘s and the “M”‘s of the SMB market without sacrificing quality of service, reliability or scale.
To learn more or speak to a Central Desktop representative about our Enterprise Edition, please visit us at http://www.centraldesktop.com/enterprise
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