Open-Xchange Appliance Edition delivers e-mail, calendar; ideal for on-premise installation, virtual dedicated hosting implementations.

Open-Xchange, a provider of open source groupware, today announced a new offering for small and medium-size businesses seeking, easy-to-deploy e-mail and collaboration software that is an alternative to Microsoft Exchange.

The company explains that the Open-Xchange Appliance Edition is a server software that comes complete with operating system, plus capabilities for e-mail, calendar and document sharing, managing contacts and tasks, as well as backup and recovery, anti-spam and anti-virus protection. It says that it can handle anywhere from 10 to hundreds of users.

"Small- and mid-sized business owners are demanding the same capabilities as large corporations," said Rafael Laguna, CEO, Open-Xchange. "Our new Appliance Edition gives these businesses advanced collaboration tools at affordable costs, while enabling service providers an opportunity to give their clients more features at a lower cost as a virtual dedicated server offering."