Open-Xchange Hires Open Source Expert as Executive Vice President of Marketing Strategy

TARRYTOWN, N.Y., Jan. 17 /PRNewswire/ -- Open-Xchange, Inc. today announced it has hired former IDC System Software Vice President Daniel M. Kusnetzky as executive vice president, Marketing Strategy, responsible for corporate and marketing strategy worldwide effective February 1.

Open-Xchange Inc. is the leading vendor of open source collaboration software. Its flagship product, Open-Xchange Server, provides the features and functionality of asynchronous collaboration software: e-mail, calendar, contacts, projects, tasks, and document sharing and interoperates with popular 'rich' clients such as Microsoft Outlook, most web browsers and a wide variety of mobile devices.

Kusnetzky, most recently vice president of IDC's System Software research, was responsible for research and analysis on the worldwide market for operating environments and virtualization software. Prior to his 11 years at IDC, he spent 15 years with Digital Equipment Corporation, where he was responsible for program and product management, and marketing in the areas of client software, server software, and clustered and networked systems. Kusnetzky appears regularly as a keynote speaker at industry trade shows and is a noted expert on the open source industry.

"For years, our company's products have been THE open source alternative to Microsoft Exchange -- quietly making us the worldwide leader in open source messaging and collaboration -- and now we welcome Dan's expertise to bring Open-Xchange front and center," said Frank Hoberg, CEO, Open-Xchange Inc. "Given his unrivaled knowledge of the market, it is a testament to our value and technological capabilities that Dan has chosen to come to Open-Xchange."

"It is clear that organizations are increasingly depending upon a highly mobile workforce, one that is less and less likely to be sitting at a desk in an office somewhere," said Kusnetzky. "The new workplace is based upon technology that allows workers to collaborate, to access critical information, from wherever they are, from whatever device they choose, all in real time. Open-Xchange is a company whose products are a fundamental part of this new workplace." About Open-Xchange.org

Open-Xchange Server is one of the most active and fastest growing open source projects to date. Launched in August 2004, Open-Xchange Server now ranks #8 out of 303 groupware projects on freshmeat.net web site, # 1 in document repositories, #4 in handhelds, and overall #231 out of 39,629 listed projects. The Open-Xchange community web site, http://www.open-xchange.org, is visited by 130,000 unique visitors each month, the GPL version of Open-Xchange Server is downloaded more than 9,000 times each month. About Open-Xchange Server

Open-Xchange Server 5, the commercial product launched in April 2005, is engineered for ease of installation, migration, administration, integration and use. It interoperates with virtually all web browsers and important proprietary and open source rich clients. Open-Xchange Server supports the two leading Enterprise Linux distributions, Red Hat and SUSE. Innovative connectors, OXtenders, enhance customer flexibility by using open standard APIs to integrate existing IT infrastructures, or even extend capabilities to such as fax, VoIP, or CRM solutions. About Open-Xchange Inc.

Open-Xchange Inc. delivers reliable and scalable groupware, collaboration, and messaging solutions. Its flagship product, Open-Xchange Server, is the market-leading collaboration server that combines best-of-breed open source software with commercial software add-ons and connectors. Open-Xchange Server is among the Top 300 most popular and most active open source projects in the world today. Open-Xchange Inc. is based in Tarrytown, NY, with offices in Olpe and Nuremberg, Germany. For more information, please visit http://www.open-xchange.com.