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Open-Xchange Teams With Rack-Soft, Combines Telephony and Groupware Tools

The phrase "all-in-one" always puts me on edge. Perhaps that shouldn't be the case any more -- there are ever increasing numbers of software and hardware products offered in group packages, and most, if not wonderful, deliver what's claimed on the box. But instead, the first association that comes are the old school printer, copier, and fax combinations. They generally did one task well (depending on the manufacturer) and the other features didn't quite live up to even lowered expectations. The manufacturer was a huge factor in which functions worked well. Even with apparently sound off-label fax modems and drivers, printer manufacturers couldn't quite make it all work together. They deal mostly with printers, after all.

Open-Xchange's collaboration with Rack-Soft brings an all-in-one solution that's an actual solution. The partnership combines Open-Xchange's open source groupware with Rack-Soft's telephony products.

Rack-Soft and Open-Xchange will offer the combined services to their current on-premise deployments and SaaS (software as a service) partners. Both Rack-Soft's 4PSA VoipNow and Open-Xchange support Parallels software (Open-Xchange supports the Parallels-developed Application Packaging Standard). This allows service providers using Parallels, according to Jack Zubarev of Parallels' Service Provider Division, to simply use built in features to introduce value added services such as Open-Xchange and 4PSA VoipNow.

The combination of telephony services and groupware has obvious benefits -- as does the concept of two companies specializing in each area working together to support and integrate these functions. Rack-Soft CEO Bogdan Carstoiu says that there are a number of areas that are targeted for improving the user experience, including the scheduling of voice conferences from the calendar. Anyone who has ever attended a conference call can attest to this -- it would be great to have a mobile and desktop calendaring system that doesn't merely remind you with a system beep or vibration that a conference call is coming up. It'd be great if it could dial you in, or allow you to decline -- and let the others in the call know as much.

There's a real appeal to all-in-one approaches. It's good to get more for the money. With each company focusing on its specialty and working together to deliver value -- in cost, time, effort, and flexibility -- there's real assurance that "all" will remain a vital part of this "all-in-one" solution.

• open source
• telephony
• SaaS
• server
• Open-Xchange
• cloud
• groupware
• Rack-Soft
• provider

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