BURLINGTON, MA - March 26, 2008 - groupSPARK, a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner and the leading provider of private label hosted software services including Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 Service Pack 1 and Windows SharePoint Services 3.0, today announced the availability of Service Pack 1 for hosted SharePoint 3.0  delivering additional stability and performance enhancements.

groupSPARK resellers can now offer their customers hosted Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 SP1 with all of the latest feature enhancements and upgrades.  This industry-leading collaboration tool enables small and mid-size businesses to increase productivity, teamwork and efficiency.  Acting as a central repository, employees can share project schedules, create lists of data, update files, and share ideas.  Hosted SharePoint’s web-based interface enables departments, project teams and remote employees to work together by utilizing their hosted SharePoint site as a central location from which to disseminate data and information.  Users can also launch and maintain web pages, intranets and photo libraries.

As businesses grow, open additional locations and even expand to other countries around the world, the need for a centralized location to store and manage data becomes increasingly important. 

groupSPARK resellers will now be able to offer hosted Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 SP1 to businesses previously unwilling to use the initial version of hosted SharePoint. “Many businesses traditionally do not jump right into new versions of software.  They wait until the first service pack is released to take advantage of the upgrades and enhancements that Microsoft makes available,” said Ravi Agarwal, chief executive officer of groupSPARK. “Our resellers now have the opportunity to offer hosted Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 SP1 to those companies who have previously been reluctant to use the earlier version.”

About groupSPARK
Located in Burlington, Massachusetts, groupSPARK is a leading provider of SaaS  services, such as Microsoft Exchange Server 2007, Windows SharePoint Services v3.0, and Dynamics CRM, which can be completely private labeled and resold by partners as a part of their own product offerings saving hundreds of thousands of dollars in development and support costs.

Its partners utilize groupSPARK’s turnkey private label platform to provide hosted services to their users in minutes.  Partners are able to address scalability and uptime concerns by leveraging groupSPARK’s 100% uptime SLA, private label 24×7 U.S.-based support and proactive hardware and software monitoring capabilities.
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The names of actual companies and products mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners.

Contact Info:
Lisa Masiello
groupSPARK
www.groupspark.com
781-273-6248 x652
lmasiello@groupspark.com

BURLINGTON, MA - March 4, 2008 - groupSPARK, a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner and the leading Software as a Service (SaaS) provider of - hosted messaging and collaboration services such as private label Exchange Server 2007 and private label SharePoint 3.0, announced today that it welcomes Microsoft’s further entry into the hosted services market with the beta release of Exchange Online and SharePoint Online for small and mid-size businesses (SMBs).

Microsoft’s beta release of the Exchange Online and SharePoint Online hosted services further validates groupSPARK’s core vision: Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 and Windows SharePoint Services v3 while being the best-in-class messaging and collaboration applications are difficult for SMB’s to setup and manage and best utilized as hosted services. Additionally, Microsoft’s anticipated Q4 launch should have the effect of not only increasing the market share of Exchange Server mailboxes from 135 Million worldwide, according to the Radicati Group, but also cause many SMBs to look at hosted alternatives such as Microsoft’s and groupSPARK’s offerings.

Microsoft’s offerings, which seemingly compete with groupSPARK, are incomplete at best, as they lack critical third party services such as BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES) - this makes the Microsoft offering a non-starter for most businesses. More importantly, the Microsoft Online services will be sold exclusively through partners but without any partner branding. The lack of partner branding reduces the partner’s relationship with the end customer as the customer realizes that the partner is not adding any value and simply reselling a commodity service.
groupSPARK, on the other hand, is a best of breed provider and offers not only current and previous versions of Exchange and SharePoint servers but also access to critical non-Microsoft services such as BlackBerry Enterprise Server for two way mobile synchronization as well as industry leading Postini for spam and virus filtering and archiving services. Additionally, groupSPARK’s partner program empowers its partners to own and extend their customer relationships by fully private labeling groupSPARK’s offering under their own name and brand - the customers never realize that the ultimate provider of the service is groupSPARK - and thus create customer loyalty.  To maximize revenue, groupSPARK’s resellers set pricing for all of their customers and can even create custom hosted Exchange offerings to sell differentiated offerings in the marketplace.

“We welcome Microsoft’s new entry into the hosted services market and are encouraged that SMBs will realize that hosted software services are a key tool in increasing corporate productivity and growing their business,” said Ravi Agarwal, chief executive officer of groupSPARK.  “Currently only 1.5 million users use hosted Exchange worldwide. Microsoft’s entry into this market will cause awareness of hosted Exchange to grow and will cause this market growth to accelerate. groupSPARK is uniquely positioned to help channel partners to take advantage of this explosive growth opportunity and maximize revenue.”*

About groupSPARK
Located in Burlington, Massachusetts, groupSPARK is a leading provider of SaaS  services, such as Microsoft Exchange Server, SharePoint Services, and Dynamics CRM, which can be completely private labeled and resold by partners as a part of their own product offerings saving hundreds of thousands of dollars in development and support costs.

Its partners utilize groupSPARK’s turnkey private label platform to provide hosted services to their users in minutes.  Partners are able to address scalability and uptime concerns by leveraging groupSPARK’s 100% uptime SLA, live 24×7 U.S.-based phone & email support and proactive hardware and software monitoring capabilities.

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*Hosted Messaging Trends 2007-2010, Osterman Research, August 2007.

The names of actual companies and products mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners.
Contact Info:
Lisa Masiello
groupSPARK
781-273-6248 x652
lmasiello@groupspark.com