A potential area of further integration with Outlook would be the contacts list, but demand for that wasn't as big as for e-mail messages, tasks and calendar items, he said.

Central Desktop's product is built around the concept of shared "workspaces," which members of a group can set up to collaboratively manage projects, track tasks, engage in discussions and manage documents and files.

Integrating Central Desktop with Outlook is an obvious choice, according to Mark Levitt, an IDC analyst. "Their customers want to have ways of interacting with and using Outlook as a launching point for Central Desktop, in order to be able to send information in and out of [Central Desktop] workspaces via e-mails, share calendars and so on," Levitt said, adding that integration with Lotus Notes would be worthwhile for Central Desktop as well.

The plug-in also should help the company increase its adoption among new customers that on first glance may not be aware of how its suite works and how it's different from others in the market. "By providing integration with Outlook, you can automatically be participating in an ecosystem of users who are looking for ways to add value to and connect additional functionality into Outlook," Levitt said.

Competitively, Central Desktop's main edge in the collaboration market is that it combines asynchronous team collaboration with discussions and live meetings, he said. "Most other solutions have those two pieces separate," Levitt said. An exception is Novell, thanks to its acquisition last year of SiteScape.