Printer Friendly Version

A scrappy little company called BlueTie is starting to make inroads into the more black tie world of email and calendar solutions.

BlueTie, an on-demand collaboration solutions vendor, recently announced that 35,000 small business customers have subscribed to its free email and calendar solutions, making it a competitor to Google Apps and Microsoft Exchange in the small business segment.

BlueTie Free is a Web-based application that features shared contacts and files, spam and virus protection for email, domain support, 5GB of storage per user, and up to 20 users per business customer.

The free product grew out of the success of its for-pay BlueTie tools. With hundreds of thousands of users already subscribed to its paid solutions, BlueTie launched the free offering to target small businesses. The plan is working: The company said that BlueTie Free is on the fast track, with a 25 percent increase in customers every month.

The company says it's changing the traditional online advertising market with what it calls its "Featuretisement" model. In short, Featuretisements mold featured offerings as relevant functionality to users. Using a cost per action-based model, business partners pay only when their services are being used in the BlueTie application. Business.com, MapQuest, and Orbitz are the first partners making their added-value services available on BlueTie Free. Additional planned offerings include blogs, dinner reservations, and entertainment ticket purchasing.

"Traditional online advertising has to change its mindset when dealing with the small business market," said David Koretz, president and CEO of BlueTie. "Just because these companies use free or low-cost business applications, it doesn't mean that they will sacrifice on the quality of user experience and functionality.

The Featuretisements model works because we are offering relevant services that match the natural workflow of our users. It becomes easier for business users to tackle common tasks if the tools they need are available with a click of the mouse within one application window," Koretz said.

BlueTie's collaboration with travel services vendor Orbitz would work like this: the tool lets users type their travel itineraries into their online calendars. The solution then suggests round-trip flights for the dates and times indicated by the user.

Once the user approves an itinerary, the solution includes the itinerary into a PDF version of an e-ticket.

BlueTie is integrating services like this from vendors of VoIP, Web conferencing, office supply, and flower delivery services, into its e-mail and calendar application.

The company takes a percentage of revenues earned by its partners.

BlueTie's software is licensed by channel partners, ISPs and other service providers. For more information about BlueTie, visit www.BlueTie.com or call 1-800-BlueTie.

Printer Friendly Version