The VAR Guy

Microsoft Exchange remains a dominant email platform. But a healthy number of solutions providers are embracing Open-Xchange, an open source email system that can run on-premise or within a solutions provider’s cloud. True believers include MessageWire and Solar VPS , two closely related solutions providers in New Jersey.

With their mutual SMB focus, Open-Xchange and MessageWire/Solar VPS potentially are a good match. Under the arrangement, the companies will provide customers with hosted e-mail, spam protection, archiving, and compliance. The price tag will be roughly half as much as similar Exchange deployments, the companies claim.

Also of note: MessageWire and SolarVPS leverage Parallels to activate new SaaS applications like Open-Xchange. As MSPmentor and The VAR Guy have pointed out, Parallels appears to be emerging as a standard for automating SaaS and cloud projects.

Meanwhile, Open-Xchange landed on The VAR Guy’s 2010 Open Source 50 report, which tracks the top open source channel partner programs. Open-Xchange has spent a lot of 2010 tweaking, refining, and updating their solution. So while trying to take on Exchange with SaaS is still an uphill battle, Open-Xchange remains a company to watch through the second half of the year.

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