DAILYHOSTNEWS, December 14, 2011 – Open-Xchange, the supplier of business-class email and collaboration software for cloud providers, announced yesterday it expects to again double its number of users — reaching 80 million paid mailboxes by the end of 2012, making it among the world’s largest providers.
The company is a pioneer in enabling service providers to offer a Software as a Service (SaaS) solution to their customers – from consumers to businesses of all sizes – and is now entering its fifth year since the introduction with 1&1 in Europe and the U.S. Open-Xchange gives service providers of all kinds and sizes the ability to compete with global and local cloud mail offerings.
In 2011, Open-Xchange announced agreements with 15 partners in North America, Europe and Asia growing to more than 42 million users — an increase of 75 percent over the prior year. Its software reaches end customers through partners worldwide that include web hosting companies, telecoms, cable carriers, system integrators, value added resellers and distributors.
The company plans to open an office in the greater San Francisco Bay area as part of its focus on the U.S. telecommunications market. Recently, Bob Pacheco was hired to lead this initiative as senior vice president of sales and general manager Americas.
At its third annual Summit held last month, Open-Xchange demonstrated a preview of the next-generation of its software that is scheduled for the second half of 2012. Focusing on content, speed and simplicity, the new release will be the first “Web age” mail available to the mass market, leaving 20 years of fat client software and unnecessary chrome behind. It will also vastly improve the experience on mobile devices like tablets and smartphones — used more and more for mobile access to emails, contacts and calendars.
In terms of product development, Open-Xchange implemented the OAuth standard for authentication of external services like LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook so that users only need to authorize once and not login each time they want to access that service. With the “Social OX” feature in Open-Xchange, users are able to merge their contact information from LinkedIn and Facebook into a single Open-Xchange contact book and even manage their information anywhere and with virtually any device via Open-Xchange’s mobility solution.
About Open-Xchange
For more than a decade, Open-Xchange has been delivering innovative, cost-effective, open source collaboration alternatives for email, calendar, contacts and document management. The company is a pioneer in SaaS (software as a service) and now a leading email and collaboration cloud application, which provides integration with social and business networks, as well as mobile access.
Website: www.open-xchange.com.
