Spike in output

While many others in the industry were talking in easy in the heat of summer, SpikeSource, a provider of business-ready open source solutions, seems to have been working double time. As reported Friday here at CRMchump, SpikeSource made its biggest move of the year with its release of the "Centric CRM Spike Certified" package to add to its line.

The Spike CRM product is a Java-based solution designed for small- and medium-sized enterprises. Along with Centric CRM Spike Certified came SpikeSource’s Open-Xchange Server Certified, which seeks to integrate open and reliable messaging and collaboration tools into a single solution.

This particular release was in direct response, says press material to high-demand items among the small- to mid-sized enterprise crowd for e-mail, calendar and collaboration applications. Concomitant extensions trademarked “OXtenders” seek to enhance customer flexibility in integration with extant IT infrastructure, and solutions such as those of fax, data backup, archiving, mobile communication or CRM.

Open-Xchange Server 5 seeks to enable collaboration via functions such as email, calendaring, contacts and task management fully integrated with groupware features including Documail, Smart Linking, Smart Permissions, document sharing, project tracking, and user forums. Last but not least (for the bottom line, all hope, is never the least), the previous week also saw the announcement that SpikeSource had signed some thirteen further solution providers in the second quarter of 2006, bringing the firm’s total clientele to almost fifty.

Said partners were listed as AgileCo, Dextrus ProSoft, Echo Lane, eTouch, Exigent, Gamma Partners, Hitachi Content Management, IM Serv, Inverse, Open Sky, R-Cube, Rocket Science and Xtelesis. Among new companies served by SpikeSource and these network partners are the Weather Channel and the U.S. Food Service. Ultimately, company strategy over at Spike calls for the SpikeSource portfolio to become “the one stop shop for open source business-ready applications.”

If the firm can keep up this sort of activity, the goal could well prove surmountable and make Spike one to watch in 2006 and ’07. Wonder when they take a vacation…? Open-Xchange was launched in April 2005 and now boasts customers in more than 60 countries. Its presence is mostly felt in German-speaking countries, the United States and France, but includes over 600 partners in 45 countries.

Open-Xchange Server 5 supports the two leading Enterprise Linux distributions, Red Hat and SUSE. Open-Xchange, Inc. is headquartered in Tarrytown, NY, with operations, research and development concentrated in Olpe and Nuremberg, Germany. SpikeSource is a software distributor, integrator, manager and open-source application supporter. The flagship solutions of SpikeSource are SpikeIgnited and SpikeCertified.