Open-Xchange: Integrators Become E-mail SaaS Providers?
Open-Xchange, the open source email and collaboration software provider, has made SaaS a major cornerstone of its offering. But here’s the twist: Instead of hosting Open-Xchange on its own, the company depends on channel partners to do so. Skeptical? Open-Xchange says they’ve signed five more system integrators from around the world to become cloud providers.
So what types of VARs and MSPs are hosting Open-Xchange? Here are the five latest partners:
- Deployment Specialists, a Texas-based IT consulting firm serving customers with 1,000 to 10,000 seats.
- P.A. Dominguez, from this blogger’s home turf of New York, is moving its existing telecommunications and legal industry clients to Open-Xchange.
- Intellicore, from Santiago, Chile.
- Quer System from Valencia, Spain has previously completed large-scale Open-Xchange deployments, including a 30,000 seat job at the University of Salamanca.
- Swiss Steppingstone of Bern, Switzerland specializes in hosted infrastructure in the SMB space as well as cloud services.
Open-Xchange’s channel partner strategy has been consistent. Back in November 2010, Open-Xchange CEO Rafael Laguna told The VAR Guy (our sister site) that the company really, really wants their MSP, VAR, and systems integrator partners to become their own cloud service providers.
Why? Open-Xchange claims to have an edge other rival hosted email systems from Microsoft and Google. Particularly, Open-Xchange thinks it can succeed with hosted email by focusing on service, rather than scale. And when it comes to service — particularly SaaS — Open-Xchange is deferring completely to its channel partners.
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