Open-Xchange Brings Sociability to Collaboration

July 30, 2009 - PRLog -- NUREMBERG, Germany – Open-Xchange, the leading provider of open source groupware, today announced the ability to consolidate social network communication in one central application with the availability of Open-Xchange Server 6.10.

Open-Xchange 6.10 introduces a new groupware concept called “Social OX,” which aggregates e-mail and contact information in one place -- whether personal or business -- avoiding time-consuming searching and giving users access to information anywhere, anytime and with any device.

“Social networks such as LinkedIn, Facebook, Plaxo and Xing are great tools for business networks. And, Googlemail and Yahoo free mail accounts have changed our way of communicating,” said Juergen Geck, CTO of Open-Xchange. “Before we end up in confusion with lots of e-mail accounts and address books, Open-Xchange overcomes the barriers between the variety of desktop and web applications, where we store and handle our multiple addresses, appointments, tasks and documents.”

“People today use a number of different e-mail addresses and social network tools to store contact information generated from their personal and professional lives,” said Philbert Shih, senior analyst, Tier1 Research. “Social OX is designed to bring the contact information stored in e-mail and social networks closer together, allowing the user to control everything from a single platform. This is a very useful innovation that messaging vendors are only starting to catch on to.”

New features of Open-Xchange 6.10 include:

•   Integration of any kind of existing webmail accounts (from Google, Yahoo, etc.) into a folder in Open-Xchange, including merging of data.

•   Contact details from social networks such as Facebook, LinkedIn or Xing will be added automatically to the Open-Xchange address book – giving users easy access to the latest contact information within their personal network.

•   In addition, Open-Xchange users can share their data with other users in a controlled way -- without sending the information via e-mail. For example, with Social OX published data can be shared so there is no need to send large documents as an attachment via e-mail.

“Our customers depend on their email to run their business,” said Miguel Ramos, manager of Hosting Product Development at Network Solutions®. “Social OX will give them the ability to engage with their customers and vendors regardless of the social network their contacts are using.”

Anyone can try Social OX for free at this special preview website, http://ox.io.

Open-Xchange is installed by more than 3,500 companies and organizations worldwide. Furthermore, the Open-Xchange Hosting Edition is used by more than 10 million users worldwide as hosted business-class e-mail, along with personal information management (PIM), and full groupware.

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.