Former SUSE/Novell Channel Vice President Joins Open-Xchange to Run Worldwide Sales Organization

TARRYTOWN, N.Y., Oct. 5 /PRNewswire/ -- Open-Xchange Inc. announced that Petra Heinrich, most recently vice president, Partner Sales & Marketing Novell EMEA, will join the company as worldwide chief sales officer, beginning October 4.

The company also announced a new director, EMEA Channel Sales: Michael Herkens.

"We are thrilled to have two strong leaders -- in both open source and collaboration," said Frank Hoberg, CEO of Open-Xchange. "For Open-Xchange to compete, we must attract the top technology and channel partners in the world, and both Michael and Petra know how to get that job done."

Heinrich, 40, has been active in the IT sector for more than 14 years. She will be responsible for the worldwide execution of direct and indirect sales at the company.

Heinrich joined SUSE Linux in January 2002, leading the company's worldwide indirect sales activities, including enterprise software, service offerings, training and support. After SUSE's acquisition by Novell in January 2004, she integrated both companies' indirect sales activities in EMEA -- and ran the combined business.

Heinrich began her career at Lotus Development, where she led the Business Partners, Distribution and Partner Marketing efforts. One of her key responsibilities was the integration of Lotus Development and IBM Software's indirect sales channels. Later, as director, Partner Sales at IntraWare AG, she assumed responsibility for IntraWare's international business development.

"Open-Xchange has a significant opportunity to give customers a state-of- the-art, yet affordable collaboration suite based on open source," said Heinrich. "We need to accelerate the strong growth in the U.S. -- while maintaining our market leadership in Europe. Partners will play a significant role in this growth -- helping us build impactful solutions for our customers."

Michael Herkens, 36, recently joined the company as director, EMEA Channel Sales, focusing on increasing growth in EMEA by building a strong network of skilled partners available to all segments of customers. Herkens brings more than 10 years of experience in sales and channel management in the software/high-tech industry and built both a domestic and EMEA channel for Lotus and IBM. He most recently worked with Tech Data, directing ongoing alliances with top value-added resellers (VARs) and systems integrators.

"Open-Xchange has strong momentum in the market and we will link our partners to these sales opportunities to generate strong incremental business growth for them," said Herkens. "We are looking for partners who demonstrate high customer satisfaction standards and a commitment to joint success." About Open-Xchange

Open-Xchange enables easy migration and integration to an open source environment -- allowing IT administrators to create and implement killer-apps without changing existing infrastructure components, i.e. databases, directory services, message transfer agents, e-mail servers or web-servers. End users can keep their favorite mail and groupware client -- most often Outlook, but also open source clients such as Kontact.

Open-Xchange offers a new solution to the age-old problem with its innovative OXtender. Developed to published internet standards using open source APIs and interface extensions, OXtender integrates simply and efficiently into an existing IT infrastructure. If desired, the OXtender can even be extended by ISVs to provide fax, VoIP, or CRM solutions, for example. Extension, for SAMBA, Wiki or more exotic uses, is also possible through the creativity of the Open Source community where OXtender originated. About Open-Xchange Inc.

Based in Tarrytown, NY, Open-Xchange Inc. (http://www.open-xchange.com) is the world's leading Linux-based groupware, collaboration, and messaging provider. Open-Xchange's flagship product, Open-Xchange Server, comes in a free open source version, OX 0.8, and a commercial version, Open-Xchange 5.0. Netline Internet Service GmbH, based in Germany, has been developing java- based, three-tier web applications since 1996 and continues to be the contract developer of OPEN-XCHANGE. Netline also provides the core collaboration engine for SUSE LINUX Openexchange.