Open-Xchange Partners with Surftown

Surftown customers will have the easy-to-use, integrated email, calendar and contact management from the company.

Open-Xchange, a provider of open source collaboration software, today announced an agreement with Surftown, a domain name registration and web hosting service provider, to bring cloud-based communication and collaboration to more than 500,000 users. It avers that by the end of Q3 2011, Surftown customers will have the easy-to-use, integrated email, calendar and contact management from the company. The cloud-based application can be accessed with a standard internet browser (without installing software) and a PC, notebook, iPad or smartphone.

The company articulates that by deploying the Open-Xchange in-application upsell mechanism, customers of Surftown's standard hosting packages will be able to easily upgrade to premium features such as advanced sharing and document management functions. In addition, the Open-Xchange basic groupware package will become part of Surftown's high-end hosting offering that provides small- and medium-sized businesses with a one-stop internet presence and communication solution. Additionally, organizations that simply need a business-class email and collaboration solution can get it as an off-the-shelf product while Surftown handles transfer services to enable an easy and smooth transition.

It states that Open-Xchange integrates email, calendar, contact and task management with advanced groupware features such as information management and document sharing, along with cutting-edge social network integration. By adding the Open-Xchange mobility capabilities, users can receive push email and synchronization of contacts, calendar and other information from their Open-Xchange account to their smartphones, including iPhone, Android-based devices, Nokia, Windows Mobile and others.

"Surftown is one of the first service providers to utilize the recently released Open-Xchange Mobile Web App that enables their customers access to emails, contacts and calendars via smartphones," said Rafael Laguna, CEO of Open-Xchange. "With Social OX - where personal contacts from social networks like Facebook, LinkedIn or Xing can be added to the Open-Xchange address book - users can access that information on their mobile devices without having to do anything further."

"Scandinavia is at the forefront of adopting new internet and mobility technologies," said Morten Felsvang, CEO of Surftown. "By providing consumers, as well as business customers, with cloud-based services, Open-Xchange is the perfect partner for differentiation in a highly-competitive hosting market."