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Many product and services companies in the IT and IP communications spaces are finding that gearing their offerings specifically to the small and medium-sized business (SMB) market is a winning strategy.

That’s certainly the case for Central Desktop, a provider of software-as-a-service (SaaS (News - Alert)), Internet-based collaboration tools. Customers subscribe to these services on a monthly, quarterly or annual basis. The tools provided make it possible to connect with other people, mostly outside the firewall, to share files and manage projects.

“A common scenario would be a small or medium sized business, or a workgroup inside a larger company that needs to collaborate with a vendor, a supplier, a customer or a partner outside of the company,” said Isaac Garcia, CEO and co-founder of Central Desktop, in a recent TMCnet video interview.

Since the SaaS collaboration market is a pretty crowded one, Central Desktop recognizes that it must have a solid strategy for differentiation. Working mostly with SMBs is a key part of that.

Lots of collaboration applications and services are available, Garcia said, but most -- including Microsoft (News - Alert) SharePoint -- are geared toward enterprises rather than SMBs.

“SharePoint is primarily an enterprise solution that’s much larger for bigger companies,” Garcia said in the video interview. “It requires IT support as well as IT resources. Most small and medium-sized companies or departments don’t have those resources available.”

The SaaS delivery model is also a key to Central Desktop’s success.

“Internet-based software allows people to try the product and buy the product on their own terms,” Garcia noted. “It makes it much faster for them to try the product without having to get IT support or executive sponsorship. They can just go to the website, try the product, and then if it works with their clients or their vendors, they’ll go ahead and subscribe.”

Of course, without a great product, the SaaS model wouldn’t do much good. Central Desktop --which has been around since 2006 and now has 400,000 users -- has put a lot of effort into creating tools that are easy to use, work as turnkey solutions, and add value immediately without requiring complex setup.

One of the company’s most recent innovations, announced last May, is Central Desktop for Office, which provides a way for users to more easily collaborate with each other using Microsoft Office. A toolbar within Office applications provides ready access to real-time co-authoring features for document, spreadsheets and presentations.

“It offers the same type of features you might expect from a tool like Google (News - Alert) Docs, but brings them into an environment users are familiar with,” Garcia explained.

To hear more of the conversation with Garcia, including discussion about the company’s strategy around integrating with partner solutions and adding more functionality, watch the full video.