Sharepoint alternative
In one of my last blogs I looked at alternative tools to those supplied to schools.
In The Mirosoft deal, which provides state and integrated schools with Microsoft software, is the sharepoint client. Schools have to buy the sharepoint server or connect to a provider using sharepoint to be able to use this.
I was not aware at the time of an alternative to sharepoint. But, thanks to Jason, I have been enlightened. This is a tool that uses open office or star office or microsoft office. Cool – document management & collaboration
The product is 0<sup>3</sup> Spaces – http://www.o3spaces.com

The product is free at community level (upto 10 users) but beyond that is a priced model.
Its worth checking this out. The pricing is for the professional form but they do have educational pricing on request.
The key features are:
- End user friendly Document Management & Collaboration
- Web 2.0 AJAX web-client
- Desktop integration
- OpenOffice.org / StarOffice & Microsoft Office integration
- Template Management
- OpenSearch
- Document security
- LDAP Integration – nice to be able to authenicate the users
- Cross platform – Linux, Solaris, Windows or Mac
- language Localizations – English, Dutch, French, German, Spanish, Swedish and Polish.
This could certainly be a useful tool for schools like Warrington that are going open source. Small school = community edition = free


3 Comments Already
July 9, 2008 at 8:14 am Permalink
another great alternative to sharepoint in the educational context is hyperoffice. its a web based tool and perhaps the most comprehensive integrated collaboration suite out there. it has the following integrated tools:-
-document management
-email and email hosting
-contact management
-calendaring
-task management
-intanet/extranet publishing and customization
-forums
-polls
-mobile access
-desktop integration
-outlook integration
certainly worth a try!
January 14, 2009 at 12:16 am Permalink
O3Spaces made a site with a comparison with sharepoint on it at:
http://www.sharepointalternative.org
Maybe interesting as well?
June 17, 2009 at 11:39 am Permalink
You might want to check out HyperOffice’s SharePoint alternative as well. We have recognized this as an important emerging market for a long time, especially in the SMB domain, because SharePoint has many drawbacks for growing companies.