An e-mail collaboration tool developer seeks to capitalize on the familiarity of a worker's natural habitat -- e-mail -- to bring the plethora of individual collaboration technologies to a single platform, said the vendor's CEO and founder.

The idea of collaboration isn't new, yet businesses don't have a clear path for transitioning from basic collaboration tools like e-mail to the many technologies out there, said Karim Yaghmour of Sherbrooke, Que.-based Kryptiva, which offers Collaboration Suite geared at SMBs.

"Being able to leverage e-mail for providing additional collaboration mechanisms has a value in and of itself," said Yaghmour.

The tool, currently in pilot version until the end of the first quarter of 2008, integrates with Microsoft Outlook by way of plug-ins to allow users to launch instant message chats and share files from their inboxes.

The Collaboration Suite is independent of the customer IT infrastructure as long as the directory service can work with Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP), he said. The platform also works with any mail exchange server.

Customers have the option of deploying the technology onsite or having it hosted by an application service provider (ASP). Among the user feedback, the software as a service model has garnered a "high level of interest", said Yaghmour, adding that the expectation is that SMBs will prefer the hosted option.

He said that while the amount of e-mail produced has significantly increased to the point of overload, the mode of communication remains central, and the Collaboration Suite in particular offers an "alternative to having these internal back and forth discussions with various parties by grouping things into a work environment that allows for more fluid discussions."

Providing that context toward more productive communication, he said, is also granted for file sharing between users.

Jayanth Angl, a research analyst with London, Ont.-based Info-Tech Research Group, agreed that it's not e-mail traffic that slows worker productivity, rather the culprit is the over reliance on e-mail. "That's really the source of the productivity issues.

Given that e-mail is so central to the way people communicate, the platform makes sense, he said.

While there are other available similar collaboration suites, the fact that this one builds on e-mail, a ubiquitous platform, the tool will have minimal impact on a customer's infrastructure, said Angl.

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