To meet the "who is who" of our Service Provider and Channel Partners you had to be at the Rhein-Energie football stadium in Cologne on Oct. 8, 2009. The day before 30 had registered for our technical workshop, 55 showed up so we split it into two. At the summit we and our 9 summit partners where very happy with the attendence, in total we had 120 people from all over the world. The venue was exciting, a whole stadium just for us (and yes, in a couple of years we intend to fill it up ;-).

What was really unique was that we had a good mix of Service Providers and Channel Partners. The guiding theme was how mixing the SaaS delivery model and the On-Premise model are a great opportunity for all, and only a threat if you miss the boat. The other theme was how Social Media now influence our business life and what we do at Open-Xchange to make using these an easy feat for our users.

Thanks to all of you who were there, it was great fun (also the stadium tour, the goal wall shooting and the Cologne beer that night). We will fire up a special site on our partner web with all the presentations with videos and PowerPoints for all, including those of you that couldn't make it this time.

Make sure to mark your calendars for Oct. 6 and 7, 2010 for the second annual Open-Xchange Partner Summit.