Q&A with CloudPOST’s Contributing Editor, Kathy Xu
Collabora Producti
vity Sales Executive Eloy Crespo recently connected with CloudPOST to discuss the company and its participation at HostingCon Global 2017, taking place April 3-6 in Los Angeles. The conference marks Collabora’s first event in the United States where they present Collabora Online, a powerful LibreOffice-based online office that supports all major document, spreadsheet and presentation file formats, which can be integrated into your own infrastructure. In this CloudPost Q&A, Mr. Crespo gives an overview of what Collabora does, how it is unique in the industry and the future of the company.
CloudPOST, Kathy Xu (CP-KX) Question: Tell our readers about your company: What do you do and what problems are you attempting to solve?
Collabora Productivity, Eloy Crespo (Collabora Productivity-EC) Answer: Collabora Productivity is the driving force behind putting LibreOffice in the cloud, and also provides a range of products and consulting to enterprise and government. Powered by the largest team of certified LibreOffice engineers in the world, we are a leading contributor to the LibreOffice codebase and community.
We provide long term maintenance and security fixing around LibreOffice with our own branded Collabora Office and Online products. We provide an SLA to keep your on-premise, in-browser Office suite available. We also provide top level “fix any bug” support entitlement with a dependable fixed price per bug, and we provide bespoke development consultancy.
Collabora Productivity is a subsidiary of Collabora, the global software consultancy dedicated to providing the benefits of open source to the commercial world, specializing in mobile, automotive and consumer electronics industries.
CP-KX Q: What has your company achieved that makes it unique in the industry?
Collabora Productivity-EC A: We have brought the world’s most popular open source office suite, LibreOffice, to the cloud, enabling everybody in the world to run their own open source online office suite, with excellent support for all popular office file formats and collaborative editing.
CP-KX Q: How do you see the cloud industry evolving? What do you think is the greatest challenge in the cloud industry?
Collabora Productivity-EC A: With the possibility for customers to run their own Online Office suite, bespoke solutions are now possible. If you buy Microsoft Office you can’t expect to have any significant leverage on contract terms, pricing, or product roadmap. Interacting with Collabora we can tailor a product to the customer’s needs, which for demanding customers can result in a challenging but ultimately rewarding purchasing experience.
CP-KX Q: How are you looking to strategically guide your business within the next few years?
Collabora Productivity-EC A: We love to go to market with partners, so Enterprise File Sync and Share (EFFS) companies make a good fit – they cater to organizations that like to keep control of their data, on their own infrastructure. We can provide all the benefits of privacy and control, along with easy to deploy collaborative in-browser document editing integrated (via our partners) with existing setups, such as Active Directory. We also like to resell our software to anyone needing powerful document or spreadsheet integration into their web app.
Similarly, we sell support services to many different verticals, including banking, healthcare, pharmaceutical, government, and publishing — there is significant penetration around the world of LibreOffice across our 120 million user base. Our consultancy does everything from hardware acceleration for silicon vendors to bespoke document security classification feature development for the Dutch Military; there is no problem we can’t fix.
CP-KX Q: What would you like to accomplish at HostingCon?
Collabora Productivity-EC A: HostingCon is the first event in the United States where we’ll present Collabora Online, and we love to get in touch with hosting and cloud businesses who wish to include document viewing and collaborative editing functionality with their service offerings, as well as enterprises that need a powerful office suite, in the cloud or on-premise, that protects their privacy and allows them to keep full control of their sensitive corporate data.
CP-KX: Thank you for your time and best of luck at HostingCon.
Readers, if you are interested to learn more about Collabora Productivity, the driving force behind putting LibreOffice in the Cloud, visit https://www.collaboraoffice.com/.
If you would like to attend HostingCon, please register by clicking here. Follow all things HostingCon on Twitter with the hashtag #HostingCon.
