Open-Xchange venture round

Open-Xchange has closed a Series B round of venture funding to the tune of $9 million.

The round was led by German venture firm eCAPITAL Entrepreneurial Partners AG and joined by BayBG and existing Munich-based investor BayTech Venture Capital.

Open-Xchange received a total of $8.8 million in a Series A financing round from angel investors and BayTech back in 2006.

This year, Open-Xchange has increased by four times the number of paid mailboxes to 8.4 million as a result of deals with:

* 1&1, the #1 hosting company worldwide;
* Network Solutions, the #3 hosting company in the U.S.;
* OVH, the #1 hosting company in France;
* Hostpoint, the #1 hosting company in Switzerland.

“We’re at a point of unprecedented growth in our company’s history and will use these funds to help us add another 10 million mailboxes next year,” said Rafael Laguna, CEO of Open-Xchange. “As the lifeblood of every organization no matter what size, email and collaboration are going through a phase of dramatic change in many cases to hosted delivery and software as a service.”

In September 2008, new versions of Open-Xchange software were announced for both hosted and on-premise implementations. The company also recently announced agreements with O3SIS and Funambol that enable Internet Service Providers (ISPs), telcos and web hosting companies, as well as on-premise customers to offer end users the ability to access email from mobile phones. In May, Open-Xchange signed a broad cooperative agreement with Parallels to integrate their software. Parallels management and automation software is the definitive standard for ISPs and web hosting companies.

Open-Xchange received a total of $8.8 million in a Series A financing round from Business Angels and BayTech Venture Capital in 2006, shortly before the launch of its product with its first hosting customer 1&1 in February 2007.