Open-Xchange Partners with Five Companies to Deliver SaaS

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

Open-Xchange, a provider of business-class open source collaboration software, today announced that it 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.

The company articulates that P.A. Dominguez, 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. Quer System 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. Quer System 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.

According to it, 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. The company adds that SaaS partners include 1&1 Internet, Network Solutions, Versatel (Germany), Dotster (U. S.) and Hostpoint.

"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."

Michael Herkens, Director of Partner Sales, Open-Xchange, said, "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), Hybrid Cloud, e-mail archiving 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."

Texas-based consulting firm Deployment Specialists 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 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," stated Orrie Holmen, Senior Partner of Deployment Specialists.

Intellicore 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 Henriquez M., 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."

Swiss Steppingstone 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," said Michael Eichenberger, Managing Director of Steppingstone.