HP's Business-messaging and Collaboration System for Linux Amasses Over One Million Users in 12 Months

Joinux Team
August 07, 2000

PALO ALTO, Calif., Aug. 7, 2000 -- Hewlett-Packard Company today announced that OpenMail for Linux has passed the 1 million user mark after only 10 months of availability. OpenMail's momentum continues to grow as a result of dramatic increases in downloads, as well as HP's continued establishment of partner relationships with top Application Service Providers (ASPs), including AT&T and PSINet. OpenMail is one of the leading business-messaging and collaboration systems for the Linux operating system.

In addition, OpenMail is now available on Red Hat's e-commerce Web site (http://www.redhat.com/store/). "Since making OpenMail available for direct purchase through Red Hat's portal, the number of users has risen dramatically -- current downloads account for 3,500 users on an average day," said Nigel Upton, general manager of HP's OpenMail business. "The feedback we have received from users has been extremely positive and is a testament to the opportunity that OpenMail, combined with Linux's open source momentum, presents to enterprises in the fast-growing area of messaging and collaboration.

The Red Hat site currently offers fully functional copies of OpenMail with Red Hat 6.1 Professional for download. This version of OpenMail is unrestricted for a limited number of users, allowing customers to take advantage of OpenMail's proven, robust, e-services technology.

OpenMail is being downloaded by a wide spectrum of organizations, including those focused on the telecommunications, automotive and heavy engineering industries, as well as government agencies and academic groups. The software is being downloaded from almost every developed country in the world.

In addition, OpenMail also is proving very attractive to ASPs, thanks to its class-leading scalability and functionality. "Scalability is extremely important to ASPs, because it greatly reduces their cost of delivering service," said David Ferris, the research director at Ferris Research. "OpenMail offers scalability, and unlike its competition it can use Outlook as a collaboration client to the hosted service.

About OpenMail

OpenMail is HP's strategic business messaging and collaboration e-services1 solution for Linux and UNIX(R) systems, based on Internet standards. Perhaps its most notable feature is that it offers a choice of desktops, including Microsoft(R) Outlook. No other non-Microsoft server supports the richness of Outlook as deeply as OpenMail, including support for "collaboration" features, such as calendaring, wide-area scheduling, public folders and delegation.

OpenMail has an installed base of 15 million seats, with representation in 60 percent of the Fortune 1000. OpenMail is the No. 3 business-messaging product, in terms of Fortune 500 installed base, according to respected industry consultants Creative Networks, Inc. More information is available at http://www.openmail.com/. Information for the press is available at http://www.openmail.com/ompr/.

About HP

Hewlett-Packard Company -- a leading global provider of computing and imaging solutions and services -- is focused on making technology and its benefits accessible to individuals and businesses through simple appliances, useful e-services and an Internet infrastructure that's always on.

HP has 86,000 employees worldwide and had total revenue from continuing operations of $42.4 billion in its 1999 fiscal year. Information about HP and its products can be found on the World Wide Web at http://www.hp.com/.

1 e-services -- HP envisions a world in which people and businesses derive new value from the Internet by moving beyond Web-based access to information to a world in which a rich array of nimble, modular electronic services, e-services, are accessible by virtually anyone and any device. HP has been working to solve the technical challenges that such a world presents -- inventing the devices and technologies that provide access, building the back-end systems that support the billions of Internet transactions generated, and developing the software that ensures information always is protected. The steward of distributed open systems, HP understands how to build this new open-services marketplace and will lead this next logical evolution of the Net, working closely with world-class partners.

EDITORS' NOTE: See today's partner releases from Ensim Corporation and OpenOne Corporation for more news about OpenMail.

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