The design engineers at German software maker Open-Xchange today unveiled OX App Suite, providing individuals with a single intuitive way of communication and sharing, across platforms, across devices and even across connections.

OX App Suite will be available next month as a cloud application service from providers, as well as software for on-premises installations. The Suite comes with a web desktop "Portal," and with a set of applications to help users easily manage their most important personal and professional data including email, contacts, calendars, pictures, music, videos, along with any kind of document, as well as other services like Google Mail, Hotmail, along with data from Facebook and LinkedIn.

Rebuilt for the cloud using HTML 5 and the latest JavaScript, OX App Suite provides users with uninterrupted access to their data wherever they are, creating a consistent experience across devices and operating systems.

"Three years ago we started prototyping and usability testing the next generation of our popular Open-Xchange Server 6," said Rafael Laguna, CEO of Open-Xchange. "The culmination of this is OX App Suite -- a real game-changer both for users and for service providers. Like the German design principles invented by Bauhaus and further developed by Dieter Rams at Braun (famously copied by Apple), we've made things easy and streamlined to give users the very best possible experience."

"Open-Xchange has successfully engaged service provider partners to deliver email and collaboration software for small businesses and has doubled its growth every year since 2008," said Philbert Shih, managing director with Structure Research. "Now, we're seeing another leap forward from Open-Xchange when it comes to collaboration software that is made available as cloud apps via service provider partners."

Highlights

Device independence: With the proliferation of devices -- computers, tablets and smart phones -- to access data, the OX App Suite provides a consistent experience across all devices. Responsive design and a "mobile first" approach delivers ultra-fast performance on all devices by taking advantage of HTML 5 and JavaScript local caching.

Halo: Delivers a view of all available information on a person, such as past email exchanges, contact information from OX App Suite, networks like LinkedIn, shared documents and appointments.

No data loss: Working in OX App Suite ensures all data will be synchronized when a connection is lost and restored -- even when the browser or the operating system crashes -- everything is restored to its original state when restarted. This is particularly useful on smart phones and tablets, and anywhere there is intermittent loss of connectivity, enabling users to continue working without disruption or data loss.

Application Flexibility: OX App Suite provides the flexibility for both service providers and on-premises installations to decide which apps they want to make available to their users and at what price. This includes home-built and third-party web apps. The same flexibility applies to users, who can pick and choose the apps they want to add and remove. All these apps can be managed from OX App Suite.

Branding and customization: Service providers can leverage the rich skinning capabilities of HTML 5 and CSS 3 (Cascading Style Sheets) to implement their own corporate design. In addition, JavaScript extension points enable providers to further customize the user interface to make OX App Suite their own experience.

Availability
OX App Suite will be available in December, worldwide from the leading telcos, hosters and cloud system integrators, as well as a download from the Open-Xchange website.

Existing Open-Xchange 6 installations can be easily upgraded to OX App Suite without any user or data disruption. After the upgrade, providers can offer users the choice of the existing OX 6 user interface, the new OX App Suite user interface or offer both -- providing a smooth migration to the new OX App Suite.

About Open-Xchange
Open-Xchange develops, markets and sells integrated tools for the app and mobile economy that enable full collaboration of email, documents, scheduling and social media. Built for the cloud, the OX flagship product, OX App Suite connects business and personal worlds, across devices and legacy systems. Sold and delivered through cloud and hosting providers, telcos and local Internet services companies-OX App Suite gives individuals the freedom to collaborate, work and communicate the way they want.