A Services Distribution company headquartered in Vienna, Austria, VDEL, announced general availability of the OpenReferent Desktop Solution based on IBM Lotus Software and the Red Hat linux platform. Including Notes e-mail and calendaring, the Red Hat Linux operating system, Lotus Symphony documents, and VDEL document management application services, this Microsoft desktop alternative brings together the strengths of IBM Lotus software.

The solution is a result of the recently announced new Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) software agreement between IBM and VDEL GmbH.

General Manager of IT, a Russian Integrator, Tagi Yapparov, said: "The fact that the OpenReferent is available also with the Lotus Express products means that we are actually addressing the whole market - from SMB to Large organizations". "We see a great opportunity for people actually starting to use desktops based on Open source platform and to reap the benefits of Linux."

Director for Business Development, VDEL, Milan Prohaska, said: "Customers finally have a true alternative to break out of the grip of Microsoft". "Security, reliability, scalability - OpenReferent beats Microsoft offering hands down on all counts. Total cost of ownership - at least 50% savings. And if this is not enough - the pure migration cost benefit of migrating Windows XP to OpenReferent versus migration to Vista, compels responsible IT managers to at least evaluate this exciting offering based on the world leading technologies from IBM and RedHat. The vision laid down a decade ago from these two world leaders in open source is now finally coming to a desktop near you.´

Vice President, IBM Lotus Software, Kevin Cavanaugh, said: "IBM is committed to giving businesses freedom of choice and the interoperability afforded by open standards". "The OpenReferent solution, embedded with the full breadth of Lotus software, is a great response to local market demand for affordable collaboration based on open standards."

IBM and VDEL already started working together on the certification of their joint offerings to comply with government information confidentiality requirements. Red Hat Enterprise Linux server platform has already achieved an EAL 4+ security rating in Europe, U.S. and Russia, designed to comply with government regulations regarding confidential information, such as data about the citizens and government figures.

Open Referent is based on the recently announced IBM Lotus Open Collaboration Client Solution with Red Hat.

With a Red Hat Enterprise Linux subscription, business partners classified as Red Hat Advanced Business Partners and Lotus-authorized IBM Business Partners may sell the Red Hat and IBM Lotus products globally, and may additionally offer a six-month Red Hat Enterprise Linux Desktop trial.

IBM Lotus Notes e-mail and collaboration software, are included in IBM's Open Collaboration Client Solution, for which more than 140 million seat licenses have been sold worldwide, and an award-winning unified communication and collaboration platform, IBM Lotus Sametime, including the industry leading business instant messaging solution. As part of the core solution, Integrated Lotus Sametime with instant messaging and chat comes with Lotus Notes.

It also includes IBM Lotus Symphony, a set of productivity tools for creating documents, spreadsheets, and presentations, and a server-based foundation for building portal applications and services, IBM WebSphere Portal, with optional accelerators. IBM Portals can be accessed through a common entry point via browsers such as Firefox, Microsoft Internet Explorer and Safari. Another key element of the solution is the industry's first social software for business, IBM Lotus Connections. The open solution also includes a team-based collaboration and document management software, IBM Lotus Quickr, and an Eclipsed-based Rich Client Platform (RCP) for developing and deploying applications, IBM Lotus Expeditor. ...