Open-Xchange, the supplier of business-class email and collaboration software for cloud providers, announced on Tuesday it expects to again double its number of users -- reaching 80 million paid mailboxes by the end of 2012, making it among the world's largest providers.

The company is a pioneer in enabling service providers to offer a Software as a Service (SaaS) solution to their customers - from consumers to businesses of all sizes - and is now entering its fifth year since the introduction with 1&1 in Europe and the U.S. Open-Xchange gives service providers of all kinds and sizes the ability to compete with global and local cloud mail offerings.

In 2011, Open-Xchange announced agreements with 15 partners in North America, Europe and Asia growing to more than 42 million users -- an increase of 75 percent over the prior year.Its software reaches end customers through partners worldwide that include web hosting companies, telecoms, cable carriers, system integrators, value added resellers and distributors.

"With five of the top 10 hosters in the world as our partners, this quest will now continue with more focus on the telecom, mobile and cable industries, as well as very large distributors and system integrators in the year ahead," said Rafael Laguna, CEO of Open-Xchange. "The decision of Openwave to use Open-Xchange as the foundation for its Rich Mail 4 product gives us access to its 150 million email seats deployed at companies like Time Warner Cable, NTT DoCoMo, UPC and others. We create a complete carrier-grade solution stack with their proven messaging back-ends."

The company plans to open an office in the greater San Francisco Bay area as part of its focus on the U.S. telecommunications market. Recently, Bob Pacheco was hired to lead this initiative as senior vice president of sales and general manager Americas.

At its third annual Summit held last month, Open-Xchange demonstrated a preview of the next-generation of its software that is scheduled for the second half of 2012. Focusing on content, speed and simplicity, the new release will be the first "Web age" mail available to the mass market, leaving 20 years of fat client software and unnecessary chrome behind. It will also vastly improve the experience on mobile devices like tablets and smartphones -- used more and more for mobile access to emails, contacts and calendars.

Important engagements announced by Open-Xchange this year included:

• STRATO, Europe's second-largest web host and services provider, with customers in Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, U.K., France and Italy;
• Host Europe Group, a leader in domain name registration and web hosting in the U.K. and Germany;
• iomart Group, based in the U.K.;
• Acens, one of Spain's largest web hosting service providers.

In terms of product development, Open-Xchange implemented the OAuth standard for authentication of external services like LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook so that users only need to authorize once and not login each time they want to access that service. With the "Social OX" feature in Open-Xchange, users are able to merge their contact information from LinkedIn and Facebook into a single Open-Xchange contact book and even manage their information anywhere and with virtually any device via Open-Xchange's mobility solution.

About Open-Xchange
For more than a decade, Open-Xchange has been delivering innovative, cost-effective, open source collaboration alternatives for email, calendar, contacts and document management. The company is a pioneer in SaaS (software as a service) and now a leading email and collaboration cloud application, which provides integration with social and business networks, as well as mobile access. Open-Xchange is used by the largest web host providers in the world, as well as on-premises by some 3,500 businesses, governments and educational institutions. Open-Xchange AG is a privately-held company headquartered in Nuremberg, Germany with offices in Olpe, Germany and Tarrytown, N.Y. For more information, please visit www.open-xchange.com.

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