OX App Suite by Open-Xchange

Col­lab­or­a­tion tools made in Germany: With the OX App Suite, the German Open-Xchange AG offers a cloud-based office solution that is just as good as the com­pet­i­tion’s: Microsoft and Google. What can the software do?

Like the two other well-known software-as-a-service solutions: Microsoft 365 from Microsoft and Google Workspace from Google, the OX App Suite consists of various programs that simplify everyday office life: Word pro­cessing, Outlook al­tern­at­ives, and cloud storage as part of a package.

However, the app suite has an advantage over the others thanks to its dashboard. All in­di­vidu­al ap­plic­a­tions are combined here, and users have an overview of the most important in­form­a­tion: new emails, upcoming ap­point­ments, current tasks, important files. This portal is quick and can be easily cus­tom­ised using widgets. Each user can therefore decide where to place important in­form­a­tion and hide anything they don’t need right away.

Part of the app suite is an email program: With the email ap­plic­a­tion, users can quickly and easily receive, send, and organise messages. The big advantage is that you can manage multiple user accounts through one interface. Emails can be sorted into different folders or marked as important. An extensive search function offers ad­di­tion­al support when dealing with elaborate mailboxes.

OX Mail does not come with its own mail server, as is the case with Gmail, for example. Instead, users or companies have the option of in­teg­rat­ing their existing mail accounts.

Open-Xchange email is also available on the go. The web interface scales well even to small devices, but you can also use ad­di­tion­al software since mobile apps are available for iOS and Android.

In order for an email program to be used ef­fi­ciently, it needs a func­tion­al address book. For sending e-mails and other ap­plic­a­tion scenarios, the app suite offers OX Contacts. The software allows users to create, edit, and manage contacts. In addition, contacts can also be grouped by topic and shared with other users. Thanks to the syn­chron­isa­tion function, the most important addresses are always available on every device. To make the creation of new entries as easy as possible, data from suitable sources can be trans­ferred directly to the address book.

The OX Calendar suite provides calendars for or­gan­ising ap­point­ments. The Scheduler allows you to manage several calendars at the same time. For example, private ap­point­ments can be managed in the same interface as business ap­point­ments that other col­leagues also have access to. The software makes it easy to plan meetings and invite par­ti­cipants to them.

OX Drive provides Open-Xchange software users with an easy-to-use cloud storage solution. Files and folders are easily trans­ferred to storage. From here the files can be moved and struc­tured just like on the local hard disk. You can share in­di­vidu­al files or entire folders so you can col­lab­or­ate with col­leagues and business partners. Other users are able to access the data and view it, download it, and also modify it.

For paperwork, the app suite offers three different in­di­vidu­al ap­plic­a­tions that are similar to those of other providers. OX Text enables letters and other texts to be written or formatted. OX Present­a­tion creates visually appealing present­a­tions, just like Power­Point. OX Spread­sheet is a spread­sheet program that provides all necessary functions for cal­cu­la­tions and creating tables.

Users can work with different formats. For example, if you receive files created in Microsoft Office, these documents can also be opened and edited easily. Since the OX App Suite is a col­lab­or­a­tion software, OX Documents also offers the pos­sib­il­ity to col­lab­or­ate. You can share the documents with other users and then work together on the content.

The Open-Xchange suite offers almost the same range of functions as other col­lab­or­a­tion solutions. However, there are more ad­vant­ages due to the software’s open design, which in turn is based on the open source concept of the project. Various de­velopers have worked on the app suite - among them some pro­gram­mers who developed Open­Of­fice earlier.

Users probably notice the open approach in OX Documents the most. Unlike other providers, this software does not have its own file format. Instead, files from Microsoft Office, Open­Of­fice, and Lib­reOf­fice can be opened and edited easily - without messing up the format­ting of the documents. At the same time, it is possible to work with other people on a document without them having to use OX Documents.

A further advantage, which in­dir­ectly has something to do with the open source community, is data pro­tec­tion. Microsoft and Google are re­peatedly cri­ti­cised for not suf­fi­ciently pro­tect­ing their users’ data. The OX App Suite, on the other hand, is designed to comply with the GDPR (General Data Pro­tec­tion Reg­u­la­tion). If users access the ap­plic­a­tion package from a German hosting provider, they know they’re relying on a data pro­tec­tion-compliant solution.

There are some ad­vant­ages with the cloud-based approach. The suite is not intended to be installed on a home PC. Users that have less technical ex­per­i­ence should always choose a solution that is already installed on a server. Even for small and medium-sized en­ter­prises (SMEs), setting up everything in the local network could be very tedious therefore it’s best to rely on a hosting provider to do the job. Larger companies, however, can also make the app suite available to their employees via their own data centre.

Just like other al­tern­at­ives to Microsoft Office, the OX App Suite is aimed at companies of all sizes: from freel­an­cers to large in­ter­na­tion­al cor­por­a­tions, all users can work with the app suite. The functions of the software package are par­tic­u­larly useful if you want to move business data to the cloud. On the one hand, you can access files and in­form­a­tion from any location, and on the other hand you can easily work together with others. Since documents, address books, and other data are stored in the cloud, the files can be quickly shared with other users.

The software-as-a-service aspect is also ad­vant­age­ous for this user group: It means you don’t have to configure each employee’s PC or laptop for the ap­plic­a­tion to work, to install the software, and to maintain it regularly. Any device that has a current browser and a stable internet con­nec­tion is suf­fi­cient. Even if an employee gets a new device, nothing new needs to be installed - thanks to cloud storage, all data is im­me­di­ately available straight­away. This saves time and money.