BT Workspace refugees will be offered a Glasscubes account

[UK] The failure of BT Workspace, one of the usual pathetic corporate attempts to try and produce a collaborative working platform, has left a gaping whole for those small businesses that used it. It’s been overtaken by other products, notably those from startups like Huddle. But what should former customers do? US-based SMBLive which had run the BT Workspace, has decided to try and offer an alternative. So they are partnering with UK-based Glasscubes, offering former Workspace users a new Glasscube account.

Glasscubes came out in Autumn 2008 and has seed funding from private investors, but is only just now launching. BT Workspace was a collaborative project between BT and US-based SMBLive which provided small to medium-sized businesses (SMBs) with online workspaces based on Microsoft SharePoint technology, allowing businesses to share information and manage documents. It’s no wonder it’s been dumped then, largely through lack of use. This does rather make one wonder how many accounts there are to get ported over. Perhaps not that many. But I digress.

Glasscubes offers similar features as BT Workspace – private workspaces to share documents, calendars, tasks and discussions, a branded online place to manage projects and centralise customer data (contacts, sales leads and issues). It also has free conference calls and more storage. It will also support the migration from Workspace to Glasscubes.

I have to say there are a million and one CRM apps like this aimed at small businesses today – Siondo is a fast-moving company springs to mind – so it’s hard to say whether SMBLive could not have just as easily brought in any number of other partners out there. In its favour however, is a clean and simple interface from Glasscube and some nice CRM features, if that’s what floats your boat.