SpikeSource Brings Business-Ready Open Source Applications to SMEs and Large Enterprises Across Europe
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Launches Into Europe With Network of Local Solution Providers and Technology Partners
READING, England, Oct. 3 /PRNewswire/ -- SpikeSource, a leading provider of business-ready open source solutions, today announced its expansion into Europe with the unveiling of the first seven local solution providers and strategic partnerships with leading European open source technology providers, including Interactive Ideas and Open-Xchange. The expansion into Europe marks the next stage in SpikeSource's growth, bringing together the global open source community with a network of local European solution providers and ISVs to deliver applications with enterprise-class functionality at a much lower level of complexity and cost.
From the business user perspective, the number of open source options is increasing and many companies are now aware of the advantages that open source applications can offer through lower acquisition costs, vendor independence, and reliability. According to Forrester Research, "72% of European firms claim lower TCO and lower acquisition costs as the key advantages over commercial software." However, while open source alternatives provide new opportunities for SMEs and large enterprises previously unable to implement enterprise applications due to the prohibitive cost of proprietary solutions, many SMEs lack the requisite skills and experience to implement raw open source applications.
To address this and enable the open source application market to follow the same growth trajectory that has been seen in the operating system market, SpikeSource is working with European solution providers to reduce the amount of time and internal resources previously dedicated to installing, configuring and maintaining software solutions based on open source infrastructure and applications. These partnerships, forged at the local level, result in tightly integrated and well-deployed content management, business intelligence, CRM, and email, calendaring and collaboration software specifically relevant to the local market. These applications are pre-configured, integrated, tested and maintained by SpikeSource and its ISV partners, for simplified deployment.
"Western Europe is right at the top of the league of open source contributors, when you compare number of open source mailing list postings from different countries with the Internet penetration of each country," said Kim Polese, CEO, SpikeSource. "The open source market in Europe is not only vibrant from a community perspective, but there is also real demand for business-ready open source solutions that can be delivered to SMEs and large enterprises. We're excited to be launching into Europe, working with both the creators and consumers of open source applications to deliver enterprise-class solutions for businesses of all sizes."
To mark its launch into the European market, SpikeSource has unveiled its first raft of European technology providers, including LinuxIT Europe, CorraTech (France), dri (Portugal), LINAGORA (France), Outdare (Netherlands), Menta AG (Germany) and Xeokydo (Germany). In addition, SpikeSource has reached an agreement with UK distribution company Interactive Ideas to be a master distributor for the region.
Peter Dawes-Huish, CEO of LinuxIT Europe Ltd commented: "Our customers rely on LinuxIT to keep their open source systems patched and to apply updates when appropriate. This effort has demanded a constant investment as new versions and updates of open source software are being released frequently. When SpikeSource approached us about a potential partnership, it seemed a natural fit, enabling us to provide enterprise-ready functionality to our customers at low cost, and at a much lower level of complexity. LinuxIT's aim is it to make it simple for our customers to integrate and deploy open source solution stacks that are tested and supported, secure in the knowledge that the users benefit from easy-to-order, low-cost subscription models. Through our partnership with SpikeSource, we are able to do just that, bringing business ready open source solutions to the enterprise."
"SpikeSource brings an excellent proposition to the open-source channel, allowing our resellers to deliver tested and supported application solution stacks. Many companies are now aware of the benefits that open-source can deliver, but the applications they require to run their business have not been available," added Mike Trup, Interactive Ideas Managing Director.
SpikeSource delivers business-ready open source solutions through a combination of fully tested and certified best-in-class open source projects packaged together into application stacks and supported by ongoing updates, bug fixes and security patches. The SpikeSource solution consists of three key elements:
o SpikeCertified and SpikeIgnited Solutions -- SpikeSource works with
open source projects and ISVs to bring business-ready solutions to
market on a common platform. Today SpikeSource offers SpikeCertified
and SpikeIgnited application solutions for content management, business
intelligence, messaging and collaboration, and CRM, which are fully
integrated, tested and configured with open source infrastructure,
making them ready for customisation and deployment.
o SpikeIgnite Platform -- Provides a complete set of tools and services
that help simplify and automate these otherwise labour-intensive and
complex task of selecting the right open source components, and then
integrating, building, testing and packaging them to create stacks that
are optimised for that solution, and ensure that the resulting
solutions are easy to deploy and easy to use, with enterprise-grade
quality and performance.
o SpikeNet -- SpikeSource monitors and evaluates all of the components in
the SpikeIgnite Platform and evaluates updates, alerts, security issues
and new releases. SpikeSource then selects the changes that are most
needed for specific SpikeIgnited and SpikeCertified solutions and tests
them with the same suite used to enable the original solution. The
updates are delivered in categories so customers can select between
critical security fixes and optional updates.
About SpikeSource
SpikeSource is a software company which distributes, integrates, manages and supports open source applications to enterprises through trusted solution providers. SpikeSource integrates applications with the right components and then builds, tests and distributes these open source solutions on an automated test framework with over 100,000 daily tests. By testing and certifying open source applications, SpikeSource offers a portfolio of SpikeCertified and SpikeIgnited solutions for enterprises that may not have deployed open source before. These solutions are delivered with a comprehensive update and support service called Spike(TM) Net. Through SpikeSource's trusted solution providers, companies can be assured that the applications have been deployed and customized for their unique business requirements. For a list of SpikeSource solution providers, visit www.spikesource.com .
CONTACT: Nick Dillon of AxiCom. +44
Source: SpikeSource
