Open Source » Office Apps

Q&A: Inverse CEO on building an open source Exchange alternative

Use of open source e-mail groupware systems in the enterprise has been lacklustre with most organisations opting for products from Microsoft, IBM or cloud providers like Google. The market is ripe for competition and Canadian company Inverse is set to provide another option by integrating the OpenChange project’s Microsoft Outlook compatibility software into the SOGo open source groupware suite. With a complete Exchange server replacement scheduled for release early next year, we spoke with Inverse president and CEO Ludovic Marcotte about open source groupware development, native Microsoft Exchange interoperability and data integration standards.

By Rodney Gedda | 26 October, 2010 14:13

Tags: groupware, Inverse, Microsoft, microsoft exchange, openchange, SOGo

KOffice on version 2.0, extensions, and being like Firefox

The idea of an application that supports third-party extensions and add-ons users can download and install in one click may be more applicable to Web browsers than office suites, but the developers at the open source KOffice project have developed such an architecture where all components are modular. TechWorld interviews the marketing coordinator for KOffice, Inge Wallin, to find out where this lesser-known of the open source office suites is headed now version 2.0.0 has arrived and what excites its developers. Building an easy, intuitive, cross-platform, and extensible platform like Firefox is high on the agenda.

By Rodney Gedda | 28 May, 2009 16:05

Tags: firefox, kde, kde4, KOffice, odf, ooxml, openoffice

Red Hat VP readies virtualisation roadmap

Paul Cormier is Red Hat's executive VP and head of Red Hat products and technologies divisions. His experienced thumb is firmly planted in many Red Hat pies; including engineering, product management and product marketing. The company credits the introduction of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) to Cormier's leadership and experience in enterprise technology. Cormier has returned Down Under on another visit to Red Hat's research and development team in Brisbane, and took some time out to chat with Computerworld about the anticipated boom in virtualisation, cloud computing, Microsoft's open source initiatives, CentOS, JBoss Application Server 5.0, how open source software can aid the current economic downturn, and of course, the growing role of Linux and RHEL in the enterprise.

Microsoft answers interoperability concerns

The launch of Microsoft's new interoperability principles have been both cautiously welcomed and sceptically scrutinised as the company goes about convincing the IT industry that it is genuine in its pursuit to provide interoperability with rival products, more consumer choice, less vendor lock-in and greater collaboration with the open source community.