STRATO Announces New Open-Xchange Webmail as a Cloud Communication Centre

LONDON, July 13, 2011 /PRNewswire/ --

Integration of social networks and personal interface

STRATO is now offering a new webmail service based on Open-Xchange. The Communicator from STRATO comes on an intuitive AJAX-based interface. The customisable interface can also integrate news feeds from other websites and widgets such as weather reports. Tailored especially for business customers, the Communicator has mobile access capabilities for smartphones and groupware features. "The new STRATO Communicator is a communication centre in the cloud which enables our customers to organise messages, contacts and appointments from various mailboxes, and manage social media easily and professionally in one interface," Damian Schmidt, CEO of STRATO commented.

With the Communicator from STRATO, all new hosting and webshop package customers are provided with basic mailboxes and users have the opportunity to upgrade several mailboxes to the premium version. Existing customers will be transferred to the new Communicator in due course.

With basic mailboxes, STRATO customers can manage emails, appointments, tasks and contacts. On the interface users can drag-and-drop inboxes, news feeds and widgets. Anyone with a basic mailbox who would like to trial the premium features can upgrade their mailbox to a premium account for 90 days free of charge.  If users wish to continue with the premium features for more than 90 days, they will be charged only £4.99* per month for the premium mailbox. During the test phase, users can cancel the premium features at any point in the customer service area.

The premium mailboxes in the Communicator include the integration of social networks, groupware functions, and synchronization of emails, contacts and appointments with mobile devices. Customers can use their premium mailboxes to directly access their data from social networks like LinkedIn and Facebook. For easy communication with friends, colleagues or supervisors, customers can use the team calendar, secretarial and manager functions. With the team events calendar, teams can coordinate themselves. The manager function allows the delegation of tasks to employees and the secretary function allows assistants to manage the appointments of their supervisors. Via Exchange-Active-Sync emails, contacts and appointments can be synchronized automatically with popular mobile devices such as iPhone or iPad, Android smartphone and tablets, and Windows Mobile phones.

STRATO's mailboxes are guarded by reliable spam protection. STRATO has developed a patented spam filter with the Humboldt University in Berlin and the Max Planck Institute for computer science.  Ninety percent of STRATO customers trust STRATO's spam filter according to a representative study**. In the comparison group only 72% trusted their spam filter. In addition, all data is stored in Germany and is subject to strict German data protection regulations.

Notes to Editors:

* Offer to test premium mailboxes 90 days free, then at £4.99 per month, runs until 31 July 2011. Contract period is 12 months and prices exclude VAT.
** Representative online survey conducted by GfK on behalf of STRATO, June 2009. Audience polled: 442 STRATO customers, comparison group of 514 Internet users.

About STRATO

STRATO, a subsidiary of Deutsche Telekom, is Europe's second-largest web hosting and web application provider. Its services include online hard disks, all-in-one web hosting packages, dedicated and virtual servers and hosted business software such as online shops. STRATO has over 1.4 million customer contracts in six countries and hosts 4 million domains in two ISO-certified, climate-neutral data centres.