Intel Corp has been investing again, and has taken an equity stake in three year-old HotOffice Technologies Inc, a Boca Raton, Florida-based applications hosting firm. As usual, the size of the investment was not disclosed. Hot Office, which has 60 staff, provides hosted intranet office applications services to small businesses, offering what it calls the HotOffice Virtual Office Service. For a fee of around $20 per month for a single user (less for more users) subscribers get access to a suite of applications and services such as email, online conferencing, document sharing and publishing, bulletin boards, internet telephony and business services such as travel planning and credit checking. The system can be accessed from any computer supporting a secure browser. HotOffice uses Sunnyvale, California-based GlobalCenter Inc as its primary hosting provider, using multiple T3 lines, quad processor Compaq Pentium Pro servers and Data General Corp Clariion storage to host the services. HotOffice doesn’t discuss how many customers it has for the service, which began operating last December. The Intel investment marks a second round of funding for the company, which won an original investment from TBG Information Investors, a partnership of Blumenstein/Thorne Information Partners and Goldman Sachs Group affiliate Capital Partners II.
