Nuremberg, Germany – (The Hosting News) – December 17, 2008 – Enterprise integrated open source email and collaboration solutions firm, Open-Xchange, has been selected by four additional web hosting companies, system integrators and service providers, for hosted applications.

The firms that now offer collaboration online to customers in a software-as-a-service (SaaS) offering, have chosen Open Xchange, rather than traditional on-premise software. The Open-Xchange open source groupware enables users to share e-mails, calendars, contacts, tasks and documents. Swiss Dynamic-NET (www.dynamic-net.ch) with 20,000 customers and 500 resellers (ranks among the Top 10 Internet providers in Switzerland) recently added Open-Xchange to its portfolio of offerings.

Sascha Sandi, CEO of dynamic-net.ch AG remarked, ”The benefits of hosted applications are compelling for end users. They don’t have to worry about hardware, software, Internet connectivity and maintenance. We provide them with complete e-mail and groupware functionality — and at surprisingly low cost.

The web hosting company is based in Luzern, Switzerland, and services customers in the region including Italy, Germany and Spain. System integrator and service provider, VAPS (VW Audi Partner Services) (www.vaps.de), serves 2,000 VW and Audi car dealers in Germany. There are some 30,000 accounts served by a centralized e-mail system. VAPS replaced its existing mail system with Open-Xchange Hosting Edition, while making additional groupware function available to their customers. System integrator, Econtec, based in Nuremberg, Germany, is using Open-Xchange Hosting Edition to offer e-mail, contacts and calendar functionality to its customer, Apollo Optik — a leading optometrist with more than 750 offices in Germany and Austria.

Another system integrator, SIEGNETZ (www.siegnetz.de) in Siegen, Germany, launched hosted Open-Xchange with its own brand, OJONET (www.ojonet.de) . The OJONET offering includes a virtual server with guaranteed minimum CPU and RAM resources.

Oliver Seitz, IT managing director, SIEGNETZ explained, ”OJONET is an attractive and cost-effective alternative for small- and mid-size enterprises (SMEs) to run groupware and document management systems with dedicated resources. Because we take care of hardware and software, system maintenance, security, backup, spam and virus protection, we enable these SMEs with limited IT capabilities and small IT budgets the use of innovative software solutions.”

In addition to these companies, leading hosting providers, led by Network Solutions (U.S.), 1 and 1 Internet (Germany), JMF (Japan), OVH (France) and Hostpoint (Switzerland) provide more than 8 million users worldwide with hosted business-class e-mail, personal information management (PIM), and full groupware solutions built on Open-Xchange. In addition, the on-premise version — Open-Xchange Server — is installed by more than 3,500 companies and organizations worldwide.

Mr. Seitz added, ”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.”

Hosted e-mail accounts grew from 1 billion in 2006 to 1.6 billion in 2008 and will be at 2.2 billion in 2012, according to technology market research firm, The Radicati Group, based in Palo Alto, California.

Open-Xchange provides scalable and integrated open source email and collaboration solutions for enterprises, academic institutions, and government authorities. It provides an on-premise version called Open-Xchange Server 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 email 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.

To learn more, please visit: www.open-xchange.com.

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