14 DAY TRIAL // On November 4th, 2010, took place the worldwide Open-Xchange Partner Summit 2010 event, at the KölnSKY building in Colonge, Germany. Softpedia was on site, invited by Open-Xchange, to cover the entire event.
Open-Xchange's CEO, Rafael Laguna, was kind enough to sit down for a few minutes and discuss with us about the upcoming Web Desktop project, and a few other open source related things. But first, a few words about Rafael Laguna, as stated on the Open-Xchange website:
"Laguna, born 1964, was co-founder of Open-Xchange Inc. and chairman of the board until he took over responsibility as CEO in January 2008. In 2001, Laguna initiated the technology partnership between Open-Xchange's development team and SUSE Linux -- today a Novell business."
"The result of this partnership, SUSE Linux Openexchange Server, became the best selling Linux-based groupware solution. Most recently, Laguna was crucial to the extension of Open-Xchange's product portfolio and formed the partnership with the world’s largest web host by known servers, 1&1 Internet AG."
Enjoy the interview!
Softpedia: How did you come with the idea of a Web Desktop?
Rafael Laguna: Since we have many service provider customers/hostess, that have a lot of web applications already, that they sell to their customers, in the discussions with them and what to do in the future and what the coming issues were, they were asking questions like - Now that we have more and more web-based applications, the users experience is not very good with it because the only way to get there is to have a sort of a website, from us, with Linux on it and where people can jump into this application and that application, but you always have to log in and only switch between tabs and browser windows and people don't actually like that.
A lot of people don't know how to use these things, so the user experience is very poor. There is something missing. We've been contemplating on what it is that's missing, and complicated things have simple answers, and we realized that because the desktop function is missing in the web you don't think about desktop type functions. We realized because we use it everyday, we don't really think about the desktop anymore, that you get when you buy Windows or Mac. But the web doesn't have that. The web has URL's that point you to the server and all the rest is missing.
Nobody manages the application, you do that with bookmarks maybe, but that cumbersome to manage those, and they are only locally stored inside the browser and if you go to another machine your bookmarks are not there. You need a service to manage bookmarks. We said OK, the desktop that belongs inside the browser provides a single sign-on, provides the application bookmark management if you like, provides an application that shows you what other nice applications are available for you, does the windows management in a smoother way than browser taps could ever do this.
We had this idea, we didn't do much for about a year until we decided to turn it in a real project. We put 10-12 people on it to develop. There was a lot of experimentation and user testing because just copying what a desktop does, into a browser, doesn't make sense. We found, for example, that overlapping windows doesn't make sense. We don't want to move windows inside a browser. All these things have come out of the user testing.
Softpedia: When we will have the pleasure of testing the Open-Xchange Web Desktop ourselves?
Rafael Laguna: The first public online demo will be available at the end of the first quarter of 2011, or early second quarter. It will also be available for download.
Softpedia: Will it have a name, or you will simply call it Web Desktop?
Rafael Laguna: Yes, we will simply call it Open-Xchange Web Desktop.
Softpedia: You know about existing web desktop projects, like EyeOS or webOS. What new things will Open-Xchange Web Desktop bring to the table?
Rafael Laguna: Yes, there are quite a few, open source and closed source, and we look at most of them before starting our work on the Web Desktop. They all have a lot of deficiencies, either in the way desktop implementation was approached, and some simply try to mimic the way Windows desktop works, and from the user testing we know that doesn't work inside the browser.
Other use proprietary technology, like Flash, and we wanted only use pure HTML5, CSS and JavaScript to implement it. Some are not suited technically to scale for millions of users because you have to build the system so that you get a high multi-tendency, a high server density, high scalability and we now what it means because Open Exchange has all these features and it took us four years to implement it. We built Web Desktop from ground-up for millions and millions of users, and there was none around that fulfilled all the requirements, and some of them are not open-source, which is not even a criteria. We feel we have a very unique system here that scales like crazy, doesn't use any proprietary technology, runs on every browser and gives you a high server density.
Softpedia: How will you present the Web Desktop to users? Will it be integrated in some of the existing packages? It will be standalone?
Rafael Laguna: It will be open-source, first of all, so people can download it. We are talking with some ISV software makers that we find important, some are approaching us to integrate their applications into the Web Desktop. You can use almost any application with the Web Desktop right-away, but the more of the API's that you use inside the web desktop, the better the integration becomes.
We also talked with large server providers that will be using it and we're talking people that are setting up application collections or application stores. You will see a lot of this coming up. Putting the Web Desktop on top of this makes them much more useful. If you are a company and you want to save a lot of money by putting all your applications into a browser, the next thing you can do is get rid of the Windows desktop, and use the Web Desktop. This way, machines become disposable and you have no desktop issues anymore.
Softpedia: I see you're using a lot of Applet products. How do you feel about Linux, how do you feel about projects like Ubuntu?
Rafael Laguna: I worked for SUSE Linux for a while and I left it for Open-Xchange, first as an investor and then as a CEO, and I'm a big fan, proponent of open-source software. I think the whole Internet, as I said in my presentation, wouldn't exist without open source. Our product is open source, the Web Desktop will be open source, and we believe that standardization can only be driven through open-source, cost can only be driven down through open source, innovation is created with open source. It's hard to create lock ends, because lock ends create monopolies, create high prices, so we are fighting that. Also, it differentiates us from Google and Microsoft. Why am I using a Mac? Mac is based on a lot of open-source software, but it's in a very slick package. It's wonderful to use.
Ubuntu is probably the most user friendly Linux client there is, which I, as an old SUSE fan find that kind of sad because in the old times it was SUSE that had this mantle, now it's Ubuntu. It's very hardware friendly. It's easy to install, it recognizes all the hardware, so on the desktop is the best Linux you can get.
Softpedia: Do you think Open-Xchange could be a possible alternative for OpenOffice.org in Ubuntu?
Rafael Laguna: I talked with Mark Shuttleworth about a year ago, in Barcelona, but they have not decided for running a messaging and collaboration server, that's what we are. We are not an office applicant integrator, like SOHO. We are not Word, Excel, PowerPoint, we are Exchange and SharePoint if you like. Whenever they make up they're mind and they want an Exchange SharePoint functionality, we'll be happy to cater that.
Softpedia: How do you see Open-Exchange in about 10 years?
Rafael Laguna: I hope that we are going to be the core mail collaboration desktop application to as many people as virtually possible, and we want to cater as many as possible. By the end of this year we'll have 24 million people that are using our system. In ten year it could be 500 million or even 750 million people. That is our goal and the market is there and the market is growing like crazy.
It's good business because people require professional email. Now 2 percent of email is used from the cloud inside businesses, in three years from now it will be 20-25 percent, so it's a ten fold groth, 1000% growth over the next 2 to 3 years, and we are growing by 100% in the software and server business in term of revenues. You reach a certain saturation, of course on the road, but we'll be at 200 million in 3-4 years from now, I'm pretty sure.
Softpedia: Thank you very much for the interview!
Rafael Laguna: Thank you too!