Open-Xchange Announces Partnership with MySQL AB

TARRYTOWN, NY – Open-Xchange Inc., the leading provider of open source collaboration software, announced today that it has signed a partnership and support agreement with MySQL AB, the developer of the world’s most popular open source database. This partnership enables Open-Xchange to embed the MySQL database into its leading open source collaboration server.

Open-Xchange will add MySQL support to its Linux based collaboration solution, Open-Xchange Server. Both companies will work to ensure optimized interaction between MySQL databases and Open-Xchange groupware functionality for joint customers. Product support for MySQL will not involve any additional cost to Open-Xchange customers. As part of the MySQL integration into Open-Xchange Server products, upgrades will be designed to ensure smooth data migration from existing installations.

“For companies looking for modern, low-cost collaboration solutions, Open-Xchange is a leading open source alternative to high-priced proprietary environments,” said Marten Mickos, CEO of MySQL AB. “Open source is spreading throughout the enterprise – now impacting collaboration software and groupware — giving all organizations the opportunity to migrate to lower cost, higher performance solutions.”

Open-Xchange Server 5 provides critical collaborative functions such as e-mail, calendaring, contacts and task management - fully integrated with advanced groupware features such as Documail, Smart Linking, Smart Permissions, document sharing, project tracking, user forums, and a knowledge base. Open-Xchange Server 5 works with the widest variety of browsers, mobile devices and ‘rich clients' such as Microsoft Outlook.

Enterprise customers as well as service providers, such as broadband providers and Internet service providers (ISPs) using and offering Open-Xchange collaboration suite benefit from a full supported open source solution stack – from the operating system to database and application.

“We are happy to offer our customers another exciting option to build their solutions on proven and supported open source components," said Frank Hoberg, CEO of Open-Xchange. “Supporting MySQL, we give our customers choice in how they use Open-Xchange Server in relation to operating systems and other applications. This helps customers to reduce overall cost of ownership for their IT environments.”

About Open-Xchange Server
Open-Xchange Server 5 delivers twice the functionality of the typical collaboration server at half the price. It works with more browsers, PDA’s and rich clients. Unique features – such as Documail, the integration of document sharing and email, Smart Links, Smart Permissions, and Universal Access – make it the most productive collaboration tool on the market. Organizations use Open-Xchange Server’s GUI-based administration module featuring Tiered Entitlement to implement role-based user management.

Open-Xchange Server 5 supports the two leading Enterprise Linux distributions, Red Hat and SUSE and is available with the Collax Business Server. Innovative connectors, OXtenders, enhance customer flexibility by using open standard APIs to integrate existing IT infrastructures, or extend capabilities to mobile devices, fax servers, back-up utilities, email archiving tools and Samba administration tools.

Launched in August 2004, Open-Xchange’s open source project is licensed under the General Public License for the software program and the Creative Commons, Attribution, Noncommercial, ShareAlike or CC:by-nc-sa for the digital content or Web Access Add-on. Open-Xchange Server is ranked #3 out of 358 groupware projects on the freshmeat.net website, #1 in document repositories, #4 in handhelds, and the #149 most popular overall project, out of more than 40,000 listed projects. On average, each month, the community version of Open-Xchange Server is downloaded more than 6,000 times.

About Open-Xchange Inc.
Open-Xchange Inc. delivers Smart Collaboration™ by offering reliable and scalable messaging and advanced collaboration solutions. Open-Xchange products provide IT departments with open source alternatives for messaging and advanced collaboration resulting in architectural freedom. Open-Xchange’s unique technology, Smart Collaboration™, has been awarded the LinuxWorld’s Product Excellence Award, ServerWatch’s Product Excellent Award, and InfoWeek’s Server Product of the Year. Open-Xchange Inc. is a privately held company headquartered in Tarrytown, NY, with research & development and operations in Olpe and Nuremberg, Germany. For more information, please visit www.open-xchange.com.

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Contact:
William Peterson, PageOne PR, (508) 393-8551, bill@pageonepr.com


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