Open-Xchange Partners with STRATO

STRATO enters into Cloud Application Business with the company.

Open-Xchange, a provider of open source collaboration software, today announced an agreement with STRATO, a web hosting company, bringing integrated online communication and teamwork to hosting customers in Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, UK, France and Italy.

The company says that as of today, STRATO starts to provision Open-Xchange business-class webmail to all its shared web hosting customers, which include more than 5 million email accounts. Existing and new STRATO customers will have access to the AJAX-based email, contact and calendar management functionality as part of their hosting package. Users benefit from a single and central communication application, which integrates personal contacts from social networks like Facebook, LinkedIn or Xing, as well as email from external email accounts like Google Mail, GMX or Yahoo! Mail without any further interaction. The cloud-based application can be accessed with a standard internet browser (without installing software) and via any PC, laptop, iPad or smartphone.

It mentions that within the next months, all existing STRATO webmail accounts will be configured for Open-Xchange. Using the in-application upsell mechanism, STRATO customers will be able to easily upgrade to premium features without going through a complex storefront purchase process. Customers will benefit from advanced sharing and document management functions, as well as push-synchronization of email, contact and calendar information with smartphones, including iPhone, Android-based devices, Nokia, Windows Mobile. Through the free webmail offering, STRATO customers can get to know the benefits of Open-Xchange without any obligation and extend to a complete groupware solution or mobile solution at any time.

The company claims that Open-Xchange is a business-class email and groupware solution specifically designed to meet the needs of SaaS providers. The software is built on proven open source technologies, enables seamless integration into existing infrastructures, and can scale up to millions of users. It states that Open-Xchange integrates email, calendar, contact and task management with advanced groupware features such as information management and document sharing. Appointments and team meetings can be scheduled efficiently with joined team calendars. Using shared folders, team members get access to all important documents, tasks, appointments and contacts. Central storage of documents prevents duplicated work and reduces the amount of email traffic. Cutting-edge social network integration enables aggregation of email and contact information from external mail services and social networks.

"With more than 24 million users, Open-Xchange is now the world's leading technology supplier of hosted groupware," said Rafael Laguna, CEO of Open-Xchange. "Providing consumers and businesses with the next-level cloud-based communication platform, Open-Xchange is the perfect partner for STRATO to differentiate in a highly-competitive hosting market."

"We have chosen Open-Xchange as the leading cloud communication platform providing STRATO customers with integrated communication capabilities," said Damian Schmidt, CEO of STRATO. "With Open-Xchange, we are enabling our customers to work more productively anywhere they have access to a browser and an internet connection. STRATO customers will benefit from access to all of their relevant private and business data - like contacts on the various social networks - from one easy-to-use interface."