Collabora Productivity, Element, Nordeck, Open-Xchange, Univention, and XWiki have put their names behind a new Berlin-registered company called Open Productivity Software GmbH.
Leading the firm are the two managing directors, Dr. Gerald Pfeifer and Peter Ganten, who are tasked with making it all work. Pfeifer held leadership roles at SUSE before taking the job, while Ganten is the CEO of Univention.
If you were wondering what openDesk is, it is a suite of office and collaboration tools made up of open source apps from different vendors. The new company is meant to market it to critical infrastructure operators and businesses internationally.
The project itself is an offering by the German ZenDiS, which has focused on public administration so far and launched a private-sector partner program for the suite last month.
Two of the founding members, XWiki and Open-Xchange, are also part of the Euro-Office initiative, the ONLYOFFICE-based document project we covered earlier this year.
What's inside openDesk?
Each founder supplies a piece of the suite. Here's a brief summary of who does what:
- Collabora Productivity handles document editing with its online office suite.
- Element brings real-time communications on top of Matrix.
- Nordeck adds communication tools built around Jitsi and its NeoBoard whiteboard.
- Open-Xchange covers email, calendars, and collaboration.
- Univention looks after identity and access management.
- XWiki supplies the wiki system for knowledge management.
Nextcloud and OpenProject are part of openDesk too, handling files and project planning, but they are not among the founders. The company also names Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace as its competition, pitching openDesk as a flexible alternative that gives users full control of their data.
How the partner model works
Customers are meant to deal with a single contact per project, who covers everything from consulting and migration to day-to-day operations. Hosting on a customer's own infrastructure or in the cloud is still something that's being worked on.
Three launch partners are backing the newly formed company. Adfinis is a Swiss-headquartered open source firm, the msg group has served critical infrastructure operators, while the French firm Smile brings integration expertise.
Open Productivity has not disclosed whether more partners will be onboarded following the launch.
Speaking during the launch, Pamela Krosta-Hartl, the Managing Director of ZenDiS, added that:
We welcome the initiative of several openDesk vendors to support openDesk’s path into the enterprise market through Open Productivity. Open Productivity enables the distributors and systems integrators that ZenDiS is now addressing with its new partner program.
You can go through the press release to learn more about their intentions with this joint venture.
Suggested Read 📖: openEuler wants Linux to treat AI clusters like a standalone machine.
Edmar Pereira
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