NUREMBERG, Germany and HOUSTON, Aug. 3, 2011 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Open-Xchange, the supplier of business-class email and groupware for cloud providers, joins forces with cPanel, a leading provider of hosting automation tools, to enable web hosts and service providers to offer advanced email and teamwork capabilities to their hosting customers.
The integration of Open-Xchange into cPanel´s industry-standard control panel will be previewed to the service provider industry at HostingCon in San Diego, August 8–10.
"Communication and collaboration tools are leading the way to Cloud applications for consumers and SMEs (small- and medium-size enterprises). Providing customers with an expanded messaging experience, helps web hosts to grow their profitability and deepen customer relationships," said Antonio Piraino, vice president and research director, at Tier1 Research.
Integration of Open-Xchange with cPanel makes deployment and billing of Open-Xchange simple for service providers and customers. Web hosters can offer Open-Xchange to their shared-hosting customers, as well as to users of Virtual Private Servers just by installing a software package together with cPanel. cPanel users can use their familiar cPanel interface to add, change and remove Open-Xchange users.
Existing customers can easily switch from simple webmail user interfaces (Atmail, Horde, Roundcube, SquirrelMail) to the modern, AJAX-based Open-Xchange interface, giving them access to advanced email, calendar, contact and task management along with advanced groupware features such as information management, document sharing and social network integration.
Open-Xchange's unique Social OX features give users the ability to consolidate any kind of existing webmail accounts — for example from Google and Yahoo — into a folder in Open-Xchange so they can be managed more easily. Plus, contact details from social networks such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Xing can be added automatically to the Open-Xchange address book — giving users easy access to the latest contact information within their personal network. Also, users can merge their calendar and address books from Google into Open-Xchange.
"Open-Xchange gives service providers a competitive advantage with their customer base," said Aaron Phillips, vice president of operations, cPanel. "By leveraging Open-Xchange software, cPanel partners will strengthen their relationship with existing customers, increase their average revenue per user and attract new customers."
"To make it simple for cPanel partners, we adopted the cPanel pricing model and charge partners per cPanel server," said Rafael Laguna, CEO of Open-Xchange. "This makes it extremely easy for hosting partners to calculate and resell Open-Xchange to their end customers and reduces time to market to almost zero."
With more than 24 million users, Open-Xchange is the world's leading technology supplier of hosted groupware. SaaS partners include 1&1 Internet, STRATO, Network Solutions, Versatel, Dotster, Surftown and Hostpoint.
cPanel´s global customer base consists of the largest hosting providers including Go Daddy, HostDime, HostGator, HostPapa, Liquid Web, SingleHop, SoftLayer, UK2 Group and WiredTree.
For more information on Open-Xchange OXtender for cPanel, visit www.open-xchange.com/en/cpanel.
About cPanel
Since 1997, cPanel has been a leading innovator and developer of control panel software for the web hosting industry. Headquartered in Houston, Texas, cPanel builds software that allows web host professionals to transform standalone servers into fully automated point-and-click web hosting platforms. cPanel licensed software allows owners of servers and websites, along with resellers and developers, to optimize their technical resources and replace tedious shell-oriented tasks with dynamic, intuitive web-based interfaces. For more information, visit www.cpanel.net.
About Open-Xchange
Open-Xchange is the innovator of scalable and integrated open source email and collaboration solutions for enterprises, academic institutions, and government authorities. The company provides on-premises versions called Open-Xchange Server Edition and Open-Xchange Advanced Server 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 email 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, visit www.open-xchange.com.