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Mobile productivity platform developer hopTo announced the launch of hopTo Work, a secure mobile productivity platform for small and midsize businesses and enterprise-level companies.
The platform offers bring-your-own-device (BYOD) functionality by providing a secure and flexible mobile workspace for accessing files, corporate email, SharePoint sites and the organization’s intranet Web services and storage locations, as well as providing full editing capabilities for Microsoft Office documents.
hopTo Work is priced at $100 per user as a perpetual license, which includes the first year’s maintenance and support. Further maintenance and support will be offered at $22 per year.
The iOS client will be available for download in the Apple App Store within the week upon completion of the standard Apple review process required for all apps, and will be available for Android devices later in the fourth quarter of 2014.
The platform does not require any network configuration effort and provides protection against data loss by ensuring that documents live on the server while being edited and viewed, rather than on the user’s devices.
“Many small businesses are not prepared to support a wide variety of mobile devices and are unsure of how to lock down access to internal business documents and applications without making access very challenging for most end users,” Justin Cloutier, vice president of business development for hopTo, told eWEEK. “hopTo Work is focused on dealing with these challenges by developing clients across the most popular mobile platforms, leveraging Microsoft Remote Desktop Services to keep all internal information on the business network, and providing a great touch-friendly interface for creating and editing documents.”
Cloutier said containing sensitive business documents to the internal network for external users by leveraging existing Microsoft technologies for remoting combined with standard security policies can help many small businesses substantially limit their exposure to cyber-crime and its costs, while enabling a BYOD program that provides access via the latest mobile devices and an interactive touch interface.
Key features include the ability to multitask using multiple tabs, enabling users to switch back and forth between projects and touch-friendly access to all permitted documents accessible by a given user on the corporate network from a variety of sources such as SharePoint, local files, network shares and others.
Other features include access to all Windows applications and touch-friendly editing capabilities for Office documents including Excel, Word and PowerPoint on the mobile device by leveraging an existing Microsoft Office installation on the back-end.
“We expect the demand for the ability to create and edit business documents across a wide range of mobile devices to grow substantially in the coming years,” Cloutier said. “Businesses of all sizes face an exponential change due to this explosive growth of mobile devices–and must find a way to balance the need to support existing productivity applications, protect internal data and provide an interactive, touch-friendly interface. This challenge is a great opportunity to build new solutions that connect all the dots in the BYOD space.”