Background
“The idea for O3Spaces was born in the second half of 2005”, says O3Spaces CEO Dr. Rob Mentink.
“At the time the outlines of the current ODF wave and the true potential of OpenOffice.org were beginning to emerge.” The necessity for open standards in general and the open document format in specific are widely acknowledged today. More and more governments are recognizing their responsibilities to their citizens, and companies are painfully aware of the dark cloud called 'vendor lock-in'. “What was lacking at the time in terms of OpenOffice.org was seamlessly integrated enterprise grade collaboration and document management functionality. The relevance of these functions as part of an office suite is clearly demonstrated by the current market leader in the office productivity arena.”
O3Spaces has taken a well planned course in developing its product. “In the fall of 2005 we approached different international industry professionals and presented our proof-of-concept as a validation of our development roadmap. With our confidence levels up we then presented our first preview release to the public at the 2006 CeBIT tradeshow in Hannover, Germany. The response we got from this was actually quite overwhelming. It forced us to take a step back to really finish what we set out to do.”
The availability of the 2.0 release (Dec. 2006) really placed O3Spaces in the spotlight, which has resulted in an impressive global customer base that has been expanding ever since.
“Now, with the release of version 2.2 of the O3Spaces Workplace, the tight integration with OpenOffice.org has been furthered, usability is again up a notch and with features such as 'Template Management' O3Spaces Workplace truly is the essential Web 2.0 enterprise extension for OpenOffice.org."