Open-Xchange Simplifies SaaS Pricing, Targets Exchange

Open-Xchange, the open source Microsoft Exchange competitor and collaboration platform that’s been turning heads in the hosted application market, has announced a simplified SaaS partner pricing structure that comes in two flavors: guaranteed revenue and flat rate. Here’s the scoop on what could be a sign of things to come for the cloud market and the IT channel.

If Open-Xchange’s press release is to be believed, Open-Xchange only cares about two things from its partners: how big your customer base is, and how you plan to pay for the groupware subscriptions. They call it “OXrate” pricing, and they have five tiered partner levels from less than 1,000 to more than 250,000 customers. No matter what tier you fall on, though, they’re still offering both aforementioned pricing schemes.

The first, flat rate, is what it sounds like – for their first year with Open-Xchange, the partners pays a flat rate granting them the ability to sell an unlimited number of subscriptions without paying extra.

Guaranteed revenue, the second scheme, is a more traditional option for what the release describes as “conservative” partners. The provider in question guarantees a certain level of minimum revenue, and in exchange, Open-Xchange gives a respectable, if modest, 25 to 38 percent discount from the standard rates.

Also included in the revamped SaaS partner program is the ability to deploy Open-Xchange webmail and personal information manager (PIM) to all customers.

What Open-Xchange has done here is make it easier than ever for hosted application providers to understand what they’re getting into when they go into business with them. Would that more cloud services developers followed their example.

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