MessageWire and Solar VPS are announcing that they are now offering Open-Xchange as an integrated email and collaboration solution. The open-source suite is positioned as an Microsoft Exchange and Sharepoint alternative.

"Open-Xchange gives us an alternative high-quality offering that we can offer at approximately half the cost of hosted Microsoft collaboration software," Ross Brouse, CEO of MessageWire and Solar VPS, said.

"We provide our customers with hosted e-mail, anti-spam, archiving and compliance, as well as support for mobile access which, of course, is up and available 24x7 to meet their needs," he added.

"Now, they’ll have a choice of our Microsoft branded offering, or Open-Xchange alternative which will be especially attractive in price sensitive situations," he said.

MessageWire and Solar VPS both offer hosting services aimed at small and medium businesses, but target a slightly different audience. MessageWire offers just email and collaboration solutions while Solar VPS offers general hosting for small companies.

With Open-Xchange, customers get a fully-featured hosted email and collaboration solution at about half the price of the Microsoft alternative, the companies say.

For existing customers, opting for the new alternative won't imply too many changes and all of the systems already in place, users, system administration and so on, can be used as they are.

Open-Xchange offers the regular tools you'd expect, email, calendar, contacts and tasks. However, it also offers several collaboration and sharing tools.

Users can share calendars, documents and tasks with other members of the team on a case-by-case basis. All of the tools are also available on mobile devices, so users can stay up to date on the go.

Open source software is increasingly used on the enterprise front and the lower cost combined with the high quality of most open-source solutions make for a compelling alternative.