Reuters published an article titled "IBM takes on Google in business Web-mail
market" - bold words but hey, this is Big Blue, right? We haven't seen much
from IBM in the SaaS space yet, so this move was about time. What is
surprising is the positioning of this offering, low function, low price
($36/user/year) but business Web-Mail. This simple Web-Mail offering is not
based on Notes but on Outblaze, a more consumer oriented Web-Mail client from
a company from Hong Kong that IBM bought cheaply earlier this year.
To compete in the business mail space IBM needs to do more than this. Real
business email offerings like Network Solutions nsMail Pro or 1&1 MailXchange
offer fully featured messaging and groupware, with push mobility, Outlook and
Mac integration, a fully featured... (more)
Money is being made with Open Source. Some make spectacular money by
exploiting Open Source (Google, Apple) and some things wouldn't even exist
without it (Internet, Software as a Service, Cloud Computing) - so it really
boils down to finding the right business model.
BusinessWeek has a good one on making money and growing fast in the open
source world, titled "Open Source: An Open Questio... (more)
Yahoo is unloading Zimbra and with it the whole SMB hosting business. While
the Zimbra part is interesting to us here at Open-Xchange, as it also shows
some technology related weaknesses, the bigger picture may be even more
interesting - especially to Service Providers.
Tier1's Phil Shih get's it right (as usual): "...Yahoo is also set to unload
Zimbra, which Yahoo has had little success ... (more)
Aside from low prices, it's also cash flow and up-front loading of risk and
money of traditional, on-premise projects that are driving more buyers to
SaaS offerings.
In an economic downturn, "do more with less" and quick ROI behavior become
the norms. But wait, isn't that what open source and SaaS does? As budgets
constrict, as headcounts lower - demands on IT will not decrease; they will... (more)
“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change
something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”
- R. Buckminster Fuller
What does Software as a Service (SaaS) have to do with open source? Not much,
you might think.
SaaS, as you probably know, is a delivery- and business-model for software
that has been proving quite disruptive to the... (more)
Rafael Laguna is Chief Executive Officer of Open-Xchange Inc., of which he was co-founder and chairman of the board until he took over responsibility as CEO in January 2008. In 2001, Laguna initiated the technology partnership between Open-Xchange's development team and SUSE Linux - today a Novell business. The result of this partnership, SUSE Linux Openexchange Server, became the best selling Linux-based groupware solution. Most recently, Laguna was crucial to the extention of Open-Xchange's product portfolio and formed the partnership with the world’s largest web host by known servers, 1&1 Internet AG.
Jacques Durand
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