May 22, 2008 – (HOSTSEARCH.COM) – Web host 1&1 Internet has joined the Open Source Business Foundation e.V. (OSBF), it was reported yesterday. The Foundation is a European network focusing on the Open Source sector. It has in excess of 120 members including “innovative companies as well as scientific institutes and public-sector bodies”.
"Open source solutions played and continue to play a formative part in business developments at our company," explained 1&1 Internet’s CTO, Achim Weiss. "The professional use of Open Source early on has clearly given us competitive advantages."
According to 1&1, its success as a web host “demonstrates how the deployment of Open Source solutions can propel business success”. The company suggests it has adopted Open Source technology to facilitate over 90% of the three million plus websites it caters for. The company further suggested that more than 40,000 servers at its data centers in Europe and the US operate the Linux Operating System and that its 3,515 strong workforce depends “directly or indirectly on open source”.
Although 1&1 has benefitted from Open Source, the company has also benefitted the Open Source community through projects such as qooxdoo.org (http://www.qooxdoo.org) - an Ajax framework that “focuses on graphical user interfaces and includes support for professional JavaScript development via a state-of-the-art GUI toolkit and high-level client-server communication”.
Established at the end of 2007, the Open Source Business Foundation e.V. (OSBF) is headquartered in Nuremberg and comprises “individuals whose shared interests lie in Open Source development and business models”. It looks at Open Source from the business viewpoint, focusing on the commercial use of Open Source software. The OSFB networks software and service companies, coaches, growth capital providers and universities throughout Europe and involves all OSFB members in concrete projects. The organization's activities include the annual Open Source Business Award (OSBA), which carries a total of EUR 75,000 for Open Source software and business concepts that are “innovative at European level”.
1&1 Internet Inc. is a subsidiary of United Internet. Founded in 1988, the company hosts more than 10 million domain names, and more than 47,000 servers run in the company's five state-of-the-art data centers. 1&1's caters for over 7 million customers.
