News: Press Release
Governments Choose Scalix for Linux-based Email and Calendaring
Recent Scalix wins illustrate increasing adoption of Linux for email and calendaring among the public sector, as security and cost concerns escalate
SAN MATEO, CA — JUNE 1, 2004 — Scalix Corporation today said it continues to see evidence of growing Linux adoption for email and calendaring at the local, state and federal level as the public sector seeks ways to increase security and reduce cost. The company said the city of Bloomington, Indiana and the county of Pottawattamie, Iowa both selected and deployed Scalix to replace their current messaging systems, resulting in greater security, reduced costs and improved end user functionality.
“The public sector is known for its adoption of Linux,” said Julie Farris, Scalix’s CEO and founder. “They recognized early on that Linux offered freedom from rising costs and technology lock-in and reduced their exposure to mounting security threats. Some have gone as far as a top-to-bottom infrastructure migration to Linux throughout the organization. Scalix allows these customers to extend the benefits of Linux to their e-mail and calendaring environment.”
Both the City of Bloomington and Pottawattamie County have adopted a Linux infrastructure and were looking to migrate their email to Linux. They chose Scalix for its rich functionality, ease of management, reliability, cost savings and the ability to integrate with other systems across the organization. Because Scalix is fully compatible with Microsoft Outlook and other desktop email clients, they were able to replace their current email system without end user disruption.
CITY OF BLOOMINGTON
Bloomington, home of Indiana University’s flagship campus, has already experienced significant performance and cost saving benefits by using Linux in its financial and geographic information systems. The city next sought to enhance its messaging infrastructure, with rich services such as calendaring and scheduling, shared folders and web access from remote locations.
“We were looking for a cost-effective Linux-based messaging system that offered rich support for Microsoft Outlook and would integrate with the infrastructure investments we have already made,” said Greg Volan, Bloomington’s CIO. “We found all those capabilities with Scalix.”
After evaluating a number of options, the City of Bloomington quickly realized that Scalix also offered the lowest cost of ownership. “We evaluated a number of other products and it didn’t take us long to see that they would require massive consulting dollars to implement and manage. It was clear to us that Scalix was the best messaging platform available,” he said.
COUNTY OF POTTAWATTAMIE
Pottawattamie County embraced Linux and Scalix to reduce cost and increase the reliability and security of its messaging infrastructure. The county government, which serves nearly 90,000 residents in the greater Omaha Nebraska metro area, selected Scalix because it offered transparent, full-function support for Microsoft Outlook, richly featured web email and calendaring and integrated easily with their Linux- and Windows-based IT infrastructure.
“Scalix replaces a proprietary messaging solution that posed a security threat and required significant IT effort to keep it running,” said Thomas Broniecki, director of IT of Pottawattamie County. “Scalix fit well with our existing IT infrastructure, was easy to manage and addressed our security issues. Better still, we’ve quickly and inexpensively upgraded our email and calendaring services in a manner that was not noticeable to our users.”
Scalix offers a full-function, richly featured email and calendaring platform that leverages Linux and an Open Systems Architecture (OSA), freeing customers from technology and licensing lock-in. Based on a highly reliable and low cost platform, Scalix provides a flexible and extensible solution that allows governments and commercial organizations to keep familiar desktop email clients like Microsoft Outlook, meaning that customers can migrate their email and calendaring platform to Scalix on Linux without disrupting their end users. The Scalix platform scales up to support organizations with hundreds of thousands of users and scales down for offices with fewer than a hundred users, making it a viable alternative for a broad range of public and private organizations.
ABOUT SCALIX CORPORATION
Scalix has created the industry’s most powerful email and calendaring platform on Linux. Scalix offers rich functionality on a highly reliable and scalable platform that significantly reduces cost of ownership. Based on an open systems architecture, Scalix’s next-generation messaging platform is based on a proven technology foundation, HP OpenMail, which Scalix licensed from Hewlett-Packard. Scalix’s veteran team has helped pioneer the world’s best messaging systems at IBM, Lotus, Microsoft, cc:Mail, and Hewlett-Packard. The privately held company is backed by Mayfield, New Enterprise Associates and Mohr Davidow Ventures and is headquartered in San Mateo, California, with offices in New York, Chicago, United Kingdom and Germany. For more information, visit www.scalix.com or call 650-931-9400.
Contact Information
Krause Taylor Associates for Scalix
Barbara Krause
408.918.9081 direct
408.918.9080 main
barbara@krause-taylor.com
Scalix is a trademark of Scalix Corporation. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.