Open-Xchange Turns System Integrators into SaaS Providers

System integrators worldwide deliver software-as-a-service e-mail and collaboration. End Quote

(1888PressRelease) December 09, 2010 - NUREMBERG, Germany - Open-Xchange has been selected by five additional system integrators from all over the world that will offer collaboration online to their customers as software-as-a-service (SaaS), as well as traditional on-premises software.

"We are seeing amazing market uptake on our hosted collaboration offering sold as SaaS," said Rafael Laguna, CEO of Open-Xchange. "SaaS is a great business model for system integrators and service providers because it provides an additional source of recurring revenues, along with a tight customer linkage."

Texas-based consulting firm Deployment Specialists (www.deplox.com) specializes in IT consulting projects from 1,000 to 100,000 users and has experience in a series of Open-Xchange deployments together with E&P Solutions (www.eandpsolutions.com) from Aledo, Texas.

"Open-Xchange complements our existing hosted offerings by providing world-class web-based collaboration software including robust e-mail, document management, and cutting-edge social network integration. Its unique design takes SaaS to new levels with virtually unlimited horizontal and vertical clustering capabilities," states Orrie Holmen, senior partner of Deployment Specialists.

P.A. Dominguez (www.pad.com), an IT consulting company and software development firm based in New York, provides solutions to the legal and telecommunications industry and is moving to hosted Open-Xchange for its existing customer base, as well as new opportunities.

Intellicore (www.intellicore.cl) from Santiago, Chile, is another system integrator that has built capabilities to serve customers with SaaS.

"The benefits of hosted applications are compelling for end users," said Rodrigo Henríquez, CEO of Intellicore. "They don't have to worry about hardware, software, Internet connectivity and maintenance. With Open-Xchange, we provide them with complete e-mail and groupware functionality -- and at surprisingly low cost."

Quer System (www.quersystem.com) from Valencia, Spain, is an IT consulting company specializing in open source collaboration and e-mail solutions. Quer System has been a certified partner of Open-Xchange since 2005. The company has successfully implemented large Open-Xchange deployments such as the University of Salamanca with more than 30,000 users. Now, Quer Systems has added Open-Xchange Hosting Edition to its portfolio.

Swiss Steppingstone (www.steppingstone.ch) of Bern, Switzerland, provides small- and medium-size enterprises (SME) with hosted IT infrastructure such as webhosting, virtual and dedicated servers, online storage and backup, as well as Internet access.

"With the introduction of Open-Xchange, we are offering our customers a cost-effective communication solution that complements our hosted infrastructure portfolio," says Michael Eichenberger, managing director of Steppingstone.

Michael Herkens, director of partner sales, Open-Xchange, says, " By offering hosted Open-Xchange, these system integrators are getting into delivering SaaS with a new offering to expand their business with their existing customers, as well as attract new customers. In addition, there are great opportunities to add more services like Voice over IP (VoIP), as well as e-mail archiving, backup and additional security for e-mail. Open-Xchange delivered as SaaS is well suited to other complementary software applications that deliver additional value to end users and give SaaS providers competitive advantage, along with revenue opportunities."

Open-Xchange software integrates e-mail, calendar, contact and task management with advanced groupware features such as information management and document sharing. Productivity is enhanced through unique teamwork features, like team view, single-password document sharing, and shared calendars, contacts, tasks and documents. Open-Xchange's unique "Social OX" features give users the ability to consolidate any kind of existing webmail accounts - for example from Google and Yahoo - into a folder in Open-Xchange so they can be managed more easily. In addition, contact details from social networks such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Xing can be added automatically to the Open-Xchange address book - giving users easy access to the latest contact information within their personal network. Also, users can now integrate messaging feeds from Twitter and Facebook and merge their calendar and address books from Google into Open-Xchange, as well.

Open-Xchange will grow its number of users to more than 24 million people worldwide - an increase of 60 percent in 2010. SaaS partners include 1&1 Internet - the #1 hosting company worldwide, Network Solutions - the #3 hosting company in the U.S., Versatel (Germany), Dotster (U. S.) and Hostpoint - the #1 hosting company in Switzerland.

About Open-Xchange
Open-Xchange is the innovator of scalable and integrated open source e-mail and collaboration solutions for enterprises, academic institutions and government authorities. The company provides on-premises versions called Open-Xchange Server Edition and Open-Xchange Appliance Edition, along with Open-Xchange Hosting Edition, which enables web hosting companies to provide an easy-to-use and feature-rich application delivered as Software as a Service (SaaS). The Open-Xchange Hosting Edition is architected to integrate into a hosting provider's existing infrastructure, such as authentication, provisioning, billing and e-mail storage and does not require that these systems be replaced.

Open-Xchange AG is a privately-held company headquartered in Nuremberg, Germany with offices in Olpe, Germany and Tarrytown, N.Y. For more information, visit www.open-xchange.com.

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