Bull, the only European-based company offering all the key elements of the IT value chain and (with approximately 8,000 employees worldwide and 500 employees in Germany), will now offer Open-Xchange mail and groupware to its German customers. Bull customers can use Open-Xchange as a hosted solution provided by Bull or run it in-house as on-premise installation – and switch between the types of operation any time they like.
Bull Germany becomes the first of the Bull Group to offer its customers Open-Xchange Groupware as Software as a Service (SaaS). Bull Germany will add SaaS offerings such as anti-spam, anti-virus, backup and revision-secure e-mail archiving soon. Bull’s SaaS offerings provide customers with hosted server hardware and Internet infrastructure, and Bull takes care of performance, scalability, system maintenance, security updates and support. The end user does not need to invest in hardware and software, nor does it require its own staff capacity and knowledge for the installation and administration of Open-Xchange. In the SaaS model, customers subscribe to applications versus purchasing them, typically on a per-month basis. Enterprises, academic institutions, and government authorities can get Open-Xchange from Bull on a hosted dedicated server or shared hosting environment.
“Using Open-Xchange, Bull Germany can offer companies with 50 users and more a reliable and affordable communication and collaboration solution,” said Michael Gerhards, Managing Director of Bull GmbH. “Open-Xchange is a perfect fit for our approach to be ‘Architect of an Open World’: Open-Xchange is based on open-source and open standards. And like no other system on the market, Open-Xchange can be integrated in existing IT infrastructure or extended with additional applications. ”
Customers can switch between Software-as-a-Service and On-premise Solutions
“All Open-Xchange products are based on an identical source code, which is unique in the entire software industry,” said Rafael Laguna, CEO of Open-Xchange. “This enables Bull customers to switch from a self-administered solution using their own servers to a SaaS solution and vice versa anytime with no migration effort.”
In addition to the SaaS offering, Bull provides enterprises and government authorities with on-premise collaboration solutions using Open-Xchange Server Edition as a lower cost alternative to Microsoft Windows Server, Microsoft Active Directory, Exchange and SharePoint. Open-Xchange Server Edition can be easily integrated into existing Microsoft-based environments, thereby ensuring that Microsoft Active Directory can be kept with no changes.
Open-Xchange groupware provides the basis for efficient teamwork. It combines e-mail, appointment, contact and task management with intelligent document management. Open-Xchange recently introduced an innovative groupware concept called “Social OX,” which can aggregate e-mail from Google, Yahoo and many others into a folder in Open-Xchange, plus automatically add and incorporate contact details from social networks such as Facebook, LinkedIn or Xing to the Open-Xchange address book. To simplify teamwork and project work with external business partners, Open-Xchange can share contacts, calendar information and documents securely outside the enterprise and those users do not require an Open-Xchange account.
About Bull
Bull is an Information Technology company, dedicated to helping Corporations and Public Sector organizations optimize the architecture, operations and the financial return of their Information Systems and their mission-critical related businesses. Bull focuses on open and secure systems, and as such is the only European-based company offering expertise in all the key elements of the IT value chain. For more information, visit www.bull.com.
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
