(The Hosting News) Open-Xchange, a provider of business-class open source collaboration software, moved to increase its U.S. sales presence by announcing the appointment of Behshad Behnam as vice president of sales, Americas.

The company increased users to more than 15 million people worldwide – an increase of 80 percent in 2009.

“As we continue to deliver our collaboration software working with U.S. service providers, Behshad will be a great resource,” said Frank Hoberg, executive vice president of sales and a founder of Open-Xchange. “We work with providers all around the world and have lots of interest in the U.S. so we want to have a ‘go-to guy’ that partners can count on.”

Today, Open-Xchange is used by leading hosting providers in the U.S., such as Dotster and Network Solutions, as well as 1&1 Internet in the U.S. and Germany.

Behnam most recently was the channel sales manager for Apptix which rolled out a new reseller program to recruit systems integrators, managed service providers (MSPs), and telecommunications companies. Prior to that, he was in a channel sales management position at DS3 DataVaulting, which was recently acquired by Terremark.

He spent three years at Parallels as a channel sales representative with responsibility for expanding the company’s products and services to the hosting market. Behnam has also held sales positions at Oracle and WorldCom. He is a graduate of George Mason University with a Bachelor of Science in Economics and Management Information Systems (MIS).

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-premise 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, please visit www.open-xchange.com.

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