Open-Xchange Secures Funding, Charts Plans for Growth

With the economy as volatile as it has been, there has been a good deal of speculation (both positive and downright pessimistic) about how open source companies will negotiate the ups and downs to come.

Today, Open-Xchange must be feeling quite optimistic, as it announced it's just closed a round of venture funding totaling $9 million and has four times the number of paid mailboxes now than it did last year. The company is focusing on a decidedly rosy looking future.

Open-Xchange offers open source email and groupware solutions, with packages, configurations, and support options designed to accommodate organizations of nearly any size, with or without in-house IT departments.

Recently, Open-Xchange has teamed with O3SIS and Funambol to enable ISPs, web hosting companies, and businesses using Open-Xchange on their servers to offer customers and employees access to email with mobile devices.

Open-Xchange runs on Linux (it ships with Univention Corporate Server bundled on its editions) and is designed to make connecting with Windows systems on the network infrastructure simple. Open-Xchange also offers a software-as-a-service option through its partners for companies wishing to use an open source solution that are unable to administer or maintain the software and hardware themselves.

Open-Xchange CEO Rafael Laguna is looking forward to what next year brings. He says that the company, founded in 2005, is growing faster than ever before and that the funding it has just received will be used to add another ten million mailboxes to the system. He says that the email and collaborative tools are the lifeblood of any organization, and that it is undergoing a "phase of dramatic change" that could make software-as-a-service an increasingly attractive option.

Open-Xchange is available in various editions with an included Linux operating system, or can be installed on alternate distributions through supported or community-supplied packages.