TARRYTOWN, N.Y., Feb. 27 /PRNewswire/ -- Open-Xchange Inc., the leading provider of open source collaboration software, announced today that it has signed a partnership with 1&1 Internet, the world's largest web hosting company, to provide hosted email and collaboration services based upon Open- Xchange's award-winning Smart Collaboration(TM) technology. This move is part of Open-Xchange's Software as a Service (SaaS) strategy to provide Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and web-hosting companies email and collaboration functionality to serve the small-to-medium enterprise (SME) market space.

"This is a historic milestone for 1&1 as well as for Open-Xchange as hosted collaboration solutions will clearly be the driving force for web- hosting companies to move their business to a SaaS delivery model," said Frank Hoberg, CEO of Open-Xchange. "The benefits for small and medium sized customers are just too compelling. They benefit from easy to use state of the art business software that really simplifies their businesses at unrivaled price points."

Under the terms of the partnership, 1&1 will offer a range of 1&1 branded email and collaboration services on the Open-Xchange platform to customers worldwide. Available first in Germany, and subsequently in the US, UK and France, 1&1 will offer the full set of Open-Xchange offerings including: personal information management ("PIM") functionality, email, calendaring, contacts and task management together with advanced groupware features such as Documail, Smart Linking and Smart Document Sharing. The co-branded offerings will be available as stand-alone and as add-ons for existing hosting customers.

"Our partnership with Open-Xchange is an important and valuable milestone in our SaaS strategy," said Andreas Gauger, CEO of 1&1 Internet. "Open-Xchange is the leader in open source collaboration that combines long term customer experience with innovative engineering. By using standard protocols and interfaces, Open-Xchange is the perfect platform for us to build future services that allow our customers to benefit from the latest technologies and reduce their overall IT costs."

1&1's use of open-source technologies such as Open-Xchange and the MySQL database provides high performance and reliability and offers 1&1 greater scalability than similar licensed solutions -- at a very disruptive price point. Open-Xchange's open standards and open Application Programming Interface (API) enabled a complete integration into 1&1's back-end email systems and business processes, such as user provisioning, systems management and billing processes.

"For small and medium-sized companies, hosted business solutions based on open source technologies offer unparalleled value for money," said Marten Mickos, CEO of MySQL AB. "Open source is spreading throughout the enterprise -- Open-Xchange and collaboration software are global drivers to establishing SaaS in this market."

"Open source software has played an integral role in the rise of the Internet but to date most of that software has been hidden in the plumbing of the Web," said Sara Radicati, president and CEO of the Radicati Group, a Silicon Valley-based market research firm specializing in collaboration, email, messaging, security, telecommunications and Web hosting industries. "The Open-Xchange partnership with 1&1 shows how open source can now also emerge as a mature application that can scale to meet the needs of consumers and businesses."

One of the world's leading providers of software for automated management of Web sites, SWSoft, said the new partnership fundamentally changes the economics of delivering email and collaboration services to customers.

"Hosted applications offer both flexibility and cost-savings to businesses of all sizes," said Serguei Beloussov, CEO of SWsoft, the server virtualization and automation software company. "The combination of SaaS offerings with flexible virtualization and automation solutions presents exciting new opportunities for service providers, including hosting companies and ISPs, to expand the range of products and services they can deliver to their customers."

About Open-Xchange Server

Open-Xchange Server delivers Smart Collaboration(TM) that simplifies everyday life, work and social interactions. It is based on AJAX, open source software and open standards and offers reliable and scalable messaging and advanced groupware solutions. Open-Xchange Server offers email, calendar, contacts, tasks, and knowledge management. Unique features of Open-Xchange Server include: Infostore, a common repository of documents, bookmarks and knowledge entries; Documail, the integration of email and document sharing/version control; Smart Links between all collaboration objects; Smart Privacy, that let's users define read and write access to all collaboration objects; and Universal Access, the ability to access the server from the widest variety of browsers, clients and mobile devices. Organizations use the Open-Xchange Server's GUI-based administration module featuring Tiered Entitlement to implement role-based user management.

Launched in August 2004, Open-Xchange's open source project is licensed under the General Public License for the software program and the Creative Commons, Attribution, Noncommercial, ShareAlike or CC:by-nc-sa for the digital content or Web Access Add-on. Open-Xchange Server has been recently awarded LinuxWorld's Product Excellence Award, ServerWatch's Product Excellent Award, and InfoWeek's Server Product of the Year.

About Open-Xchange Inc.

Open-Xchange Inc. is the innovator of scalable and integrated open source email and collaboration solutions for enterprises, academic institutions, and government authorities. Open-Xchange enables web-hosting companies to provide an easy-to-use and feature-rich application delivered using Software as a Service (SaaS). Internet service providers (ISPs) and hosting providers, led by 1&1 Internet, deliver advanced email and groupware features through Open- Xchange to millions of users. Open-Xchange Inc. is a privately held company headquartered in Tarrytown, NY, with research, development, and operations in Olpe and Nuremberg, Germany. For more information, please visit http://www.open-xchange.com/.

NOTE: MySQL is a registered trademark of MySQL AB in the United States and other countries. Other products mentioned may be trademarks of their respective companies.

CONTACT: William Peterson 508-393-8551 bill@pageonepr.com

CONTACT: William Peterson of Page One PR, +1-508-393-8551, or
bill@pageonepr.com, for Open-Xchange Inc.

Web site: http://www.open-xchange.com/