A ‘Macsimum’ interview with CatalystWeb’s CEO
Posted by Dennis Sellers 
Mar 25, 2008 at 5:19pm
Yesterday CatalystWeb, a provider of web-based collaboration and communication software for small businesses, announced that their flagship offering, CatalystOffice, is now Mac compatible utilizing the Firefox web browser. Macsimum News interviewed CatalystWeb CEO Bob Mathew about the product’s Mac release.
Macsimum News: What was the impetus for bringing CatalystWeb to the Mac?
Mathew: Feedback from our users. We realized that a large number of small businesses providing professional services such as consulting used Macs. We also noticed a separate trend where people used Windows-based PCs at work but had Macs at home. It was imperative that CatalystWeb, given its commitment to small businesses, enhance its online document editing capabilities to work seamlessly on the Mac as it does on the PC.
Macsimum News: What were the reasons forchoosing Firefox over Safari?
Mathew: We chose Firefox because we believe that it is the fastest and most secure web browser available today. In addition, while Mac users tend to have Safari on their machines, PC users do not, while a large number of Mac users also use Firefox. Finally, we believe that the development path of Firefox is very much focused on enabling web applications such as CatalystOffice compared to Safari and the other browsers in the market today.
Macsimum News: Who do you see as main customers/clients for your product?
Mathew: CatalystWeb targets small businesses under 20 employees/users although the service could be used by larger organizations as well as smaller units within larger organizations for projects or specific groups.
Macsimum News: How long has CatalystWeb (the company and the product) been around? Can you tell us a bit about the history of the company and the product?
Mathew: CatalystWeb was founded in 2003. Its flagship service, CatalystOffice has been in beta since early 2007 and was officially launched at DEMO08 at the end of January. CatalystWeb is committed to bringing enterprise-grade solutions such as CatalystOffice to America’s 25 million small businesses. CatalystOffice offers a Web-based suite of integrated applications that includes business-class email, document management, calendar, contacts, tasks, IM, and collaboration. CatalystWeb offers a revolutionary, unlimited-user license for CatalystOffice and prices the service based on the space a business needs and not on the number of employees/users. The software is delivered via a Software-as-a-Service business model and does not require upfront fees or long term commitments.
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Dennis Sellers
Dennis has been a newspaper editor/reporter (seven years) and teacher (seven years). He has over 4,000 magazine, newspaper and online articles to his credit. He has also covered the Mac and tech industries for over a decade for such online publications as MacCentral, MacMinute and now MacsimumNews.
Jason Says:
Lame excuse, and I mean excuse for not developing for the major browsers of a given platform. Every developer worth their merit has to do so, and to just make a blanket statement and say most Mac users have Firefox is inaccurate. It is just a poor way of saying we want to take the easiest route, not the best. To test on the Mac, running Safari and test on the PC, running IE is necessary, and rather inexpensive, especially considering Safari is now on the PC, too. They don’t even have to buy a Mac to test for it.
I do have all of the major browsers (for testing purposes) and while it would be nice to see their solution, I am not going to bother, as if they cannot bother to support the major browsers, then I don’t have the inclination to support their efforts.
Posted on March 25, 2008