open-xchange

Facebook blocks a second contact export tool

Open-Xchange's tool for helping people reconstruct their Facebook contact list on Google+ has fallen victim to Facebook's revocation of its privileges.

Open-Xchange, a maker of open-source e-mail and collaboration software, last week launched a tool that used the company's Social OX technology to help people assemble a list of their friends. It used connections to a combination of services such as LinkedIn and e-mail accounts to create a single "magic address book."

The tool didn't actually copy e-mail addresses from Facebook--only first and last names. It then matched those names to other e-mail records in the user's accounts. But Facebook disabled the API (application programming interface) key that the software used to read the names, Open-Xchange Chief Executive Rafael Laguna said.

Facebook gave two reasons for the move and underscored the seriousness of its decision with a warning about the repercussions: … Read more

Open-Xchange launches Facebook contact exporter

Open-Xchange, a company making open-source software for e-mail and other collaboration tasks, released a tool today to help people migrate extract contact information their Facebook friends have shared.

"The cloud needs to be open--just as source code and data protocols needed to be open to create the Internet. With more and more data moving into and being created inside the cloud, this data needs to be owned by the creators, not the services," Open-Xchange Chief Executive Rafael Laguna said in a blog post explaining Open-Xchange's tool.

His perspective differs from Facebook's: the company has blocked a Chrome extension … Read more

Open-Xchange plans Facebook contact exporter

Open-Xchange, maker of open-source software for e-mail and other collaboration needs, plans to release a tool to let people extract contact information from Facebook friends who've shared it.

The technique uses the company's SocialOX tool, which provides what Chief Executive Rafael Laguna calls a "magic address book" that draws on your online address books at LinkedIn, Gmail, and other sites.

The tool is arriving during a hot time for social networking: Google has just launched a mostly closed beta test of its new service, Google+, and incumbent power Facebook is blocking access to another tool that can be used to move contact information to Google+. … Read more

Commercial open source had very good 2009

2009 was very good for open-source businesses. Sure, there was the very public news of Red Hat's gravity-defying year, along with Novell's SUSE Linux business climbing each quarter, but what of the still-private open-source companies?

It turns out they had much to celebrate, too.

Not every open-source company publicized its progress, but several did:

SugarCRM announced a "record year in terms of revenue, subscriptions and users, adding over 2,000 commercial customers" to bring its total customer base to over 6,000 organizations scattered across 75 different countries. (Disclosure: I am an advisor to the company.) … Read more

Why the enterprise needs your address book

I read with interest that open-source messaging vendor Open-Xchange is building a "meta-address book" service that brings together your contacts from various social networking sites into "one continuous stream of updating contacts." While promising, I don't think it goes far enough.

It's nice to have a centralized address book. It's even better to analyze the connections between contacts and deliver services based on that data, as I recently argued.

One area in which this information would be hugely valuable is in connecting enterprises through their respective employees. Think about it: most companies spend … Read more

Open-Xchange nabs $9 million to fight Exchange

Open-source email company Open-Xchange has raised a $9 million Series B round in a difficult financing environment, bringing its total funding to $17.8 million.

With this fresh infusion of cash Open-Xchange is expected to mount a more serious challenge to Microsoft's ubiquitous Exchange product. Open-Xchange claims 8.4 million paid mailboxes worldwide.

The real question for the company will be how to expand into enterprises. Most open-source software companies tend to infiltrate enterprises at the departmental level, proliferating from an initially small beachhead. Email, however, doesn't really work this way. Unlike an ECM or CRM system, it'… Read more

Open Xchange lands $9 million funding round

Open-Xchange announced Monday it landed a $9 million second round of funding, with the proceeds earmarked for furthering its software development and expansion of its U.S., European, and emerging markets.

eCapital led the round, with BayBG and existing investor BayTech Venture Capital contributing to the round. The company has raised a total of $17.8 million to date.

Open-Xchange, which last year named a new chief executive and a new chief technology officer, develops software aimed at taking share from Microsoft's Exchange offerings.

The open source start-up develops software designed to provide e-mail, document sharing, shared calendars, and … Read more

Open-Xchange aims for U.S. expansion

Open-Xchange is using Yahoo's acquisition of rival Zimbra last year as an invitation to tackle the U.S. market with its open-source server software for e-mail, calendars, and other collaboration tools.

"Now is the time. The vacuum has been created, and we feel the suction," said Rafael Laguna de la Vera, who took over as chief executive in January. "Yahoo is not a software company...Now, with Microsoft (trying to acquire Yahoo), I think it's over for Zimbra."

Those are bold words for a CEO of an unprofitable company with 2007 revenue of $2.… Read more

Want to migrate from Lotus/Domino? Open-Xchange makes it easy

Open-Xchange has announced the Domino20X tool to enable easy migration from IBM's Lotus/Domino to the open-source messaging and collaboration program, Open-Xchange. With all due respect to IBM, Lotus/Domino is (or was - I haven't had to use it since 2001) a (very) heavy messaging system that feels very Big Company and 1980s. Maybe it has become better since I last used it. For anyone other than a 100,000-person enterprise, however, migration may well be on the cards:

Open-Xchange and Pavone have developed a tool, Domino20X, to make it easier for administrators to convert from IBM'… Read more

Open-Xchange goes Express, sheds its Suse roots

I go away for the weekend to Lake Powell and the North Rim of the Grand Canyon and I come back to some highly intriguing news from Open-Xchange: the release of the company's Express Edition. First there was the standard server product, then the hosting solution, and now Express.

Express is cool on a number of different levels. First, unlike proprietary e-mail systems, Open-Xchange doesn't foist on the IT administrator a range of hidden costs. You get the full-fledged e-mail and collaboration server without paying a nickel extra for the operating system, directory service, etc. You pay for the product, and nothing more. (This seems like it should be the norm, but it's not.)

This is especially good to know given the market at which Express Edition is targeted: the small to medium-size business. SMBs don't have huge pockets filled with cash to buy ancillary software, hire an expensive administrator, etc. They just want it to work, and Open-Xchange's Express Edition seems to fill this need particularly well. (I'm downloading it to try it out, and will let you know if it lives up to its billing.)

Second, and extremely interesting to me, Express Edition runs on Ubuntu. Why does this matter? Well, for one thing it shows Ubuntu's stablity and performance. But on an even more interesting note, take a look at Open-Xchange's management team, and in particular its CTO, Jürgen Geck. You might remember that he was the CTO at Suse....Or check out Open-Xchange's co-founder and EVP of engineering, Martin Kauss. Yep, he was a Suse guy before, too. The list goes on....… Read more