HOT on the heels of its Enterprise360 managed communications solution for larger SMBs launched earlier this month, SingTel today unveiled launch plans for its Office360 solution suite that will target smaller SMBs.

At a briefing last week, SingTel's vice-president of business marketing, Wong Soon Nam, detailed his company's latest salvo in the SMB space that aims to reach out to businesses with about 10 to 50 employees. 'The lower end of the SMB market tends to behave like consumers,' he said. 'Price and cost effectiveness are very important to them.'

SingTel's Office360 solution thus aims to package all the essential communications services needed by SMBs - such as wired and wireless broadband services, as well as fixed and mobile phone lins - into a single package, for a monthly subscription charge.

Some of the features of the new offering includes unlimited incoming and outgoing mobile calls among five mobile lines and one fixed line, unlimited fixed line local calls, unlimited broadband, as well as access to its 'BizWeb' portal that offers email, calendaring and contacts management features. Mr Wong claimed that its Office360 solution will be offered with an industry standard 99.9 per cent uptime service level agreement. Office360 will be available on two-year contracts, and is also scalable should its customers' needs grow, said Mr Wong. Pricing details for Office360 will however, be only revealed tomorrow.

SingTel's Enterprise360 packages, which are targeted at companies with 50 to 250 employees, are currently priced from $700 to $4,800 per month. Industry observers thus expect Office360 packages to be priced between this and SingTel's mio service plans for consumers, which run from $68 to $148 per month.

This article first appeared in BT on March 26, 2007