When it comes to cloud productivity apps, your mind likely wanders to Microsoft Office 365 or the older but less-robust Google Apps.
Open-Xchange (OX) wants you to know there is an alternative, one that 1.5 million new users in Central and Eastern Europe may soon be discovering for themselves. That’s because the open source company just struck a deal with home.pl, an Internet services provider that is now the first large hoster to provide the latest OX App Suite.
The suite is not a 100 percent direct competitor to Google Apps and Office 365, as it doesn’t have the word processing and some of the other core productivity apps many suites offer. What it does have is e-mail, scheduling, social media and the ability to manage and collaborate on documents.
“OX App Suite enables users to manage e-mail, contacts and appointments in a single user interface, integrated with other services like Google Mail, Hotmail and social network feeds from Twitter and Facebook,” Open-Xchange said. “In addition, home.pl customers benefit from the ability to view and manage their media such as pictures, videos and music, as well as manage and edit office documents using OX Text, a tool for direct text editing in the browser.”
OX is not exactly new to the market. In Europe, three of the top five big service providers use OX in some form. In fact, in many cases the services are resold to even other providers on a white label basis. That is the strategy that led to the software’s more than 70 million current users.
Now Central Europe can get ready for OX and OX App Suite.
“Thanks to the new Web-based desktop, users can work in a browser window to read and send mail, plan their working day using a built-in calendar, and check activity on Facebook. When away from the office, these services can also be accessed from a smartphone or tablet, making this a solution designed for modern mobile businesses,” says home.pl CEO Marcin Kusmierz.Here is what the OX App Suite contains, according to its provider:
- OX Portal - Access e-mail, social content and new services from one view
- OX Mail - Manages e-mail inboxes all from one location
- OX Calendar - Unifies individual and team calendars
- OX Contacts - Makes managing connections easier
- OX Files - Stores everything (music, photos, documents) and view anywhere
Service Provider Story
The privately-held company, based in Nuremberg, Germany, is all about service provider partners, including MSPs.
Here’s the pitch. “Web consumption is accelerating. But there’s a price to pay for this hyper-connectivity: increasingly complex digital lives and surrendering basic freedoms. The search, software and social giants are doing everything in their power to control data flow. Control big data!” the company argues. “And, as a Service Provider, you’re in direct competition. With Open-Xchange you can get ahead of the game by offering your customers freedom that they could only dream of – a fully integrated online life.”
The company further argues that “OX App Suite integrates smoothly into existing infrastructures and massively scales across multi-tenant architectures securely and reliably. Offer your users a seamless messaging experience to deliver branded, app-economy services and take back the user experience,” it boasts. “Through a modular App-based portal, HTML5 interoperability gives providers a new basis to up-sell and cross-sell white-labeled services and mobile applications.”
Edited by
Rory J. Thompson
