A fork of OTRS rises: capeIT breathes new life into service management

The software service provider c.a.p.e. IT GmbH will split off its product KIX4OTRS from the present OTRS base and change it into an independent software. The further development of the open source service management is planned as cooperation with a community and partner network.

Chemnitz, 9th December 2015 – cape IT develops a fork of the Open Ticket Request System (OTRS), which should be published as KIX in the foreseeable future. The company informs about the new generation of the present KIX4OTRS consciously, because it suits for the classic IT service management (ITSM) and also for service processing in the industry and health care (medical engineering). KIX will be published within AGPL-V3, which is the same open source licence as OTRS itself and KIX4OTRS that has been developed by the capeIT for years.

The present core product KIX4OTRS will be released in the version 8 in January 2016. It will be the last (so far) planned release of KIX4OTRS for the current OTRS framework 5. Based on the technology, capeIT will build an intermediate stage to make it easier for KIX4OTRS users and partners to switch to KIX. In the future, KIX will be developed and the OTRS code will be continuously replaced with the new solutions coordinated by the capeIT. Planned are a basic and a professional version of KIX. The new products will combine the functional innovation advantage of KIX4OTRS with chosen, already separately available maintained modules. KIX will include simple installation & configuration automatism, which makes it easier to maintain the entire system. In general, KIX will stand out against OTRS with clearly extended range of functions and therefore, KIX can be compared with closed source solutions directly. The operational area are technical and IT service management.

The new development branch is a reaction on the policy of the OTRS AG, the vendor of OTRS. The policy doesn't include long-time insight into the release plans and the availability of the base software. It also doesn't support community and partner network optimally. capeIT have been developing KIX4OTRS as the worldwide most extended community module for OTRS to immensly increase the innovation grade of the base software.

The traditional focus of KIX4OTRS was set on IT helpdesk. In the last years, KIX4OTRS has been increasingly applied as monitoring and technical service for industry plants and medical engineering. The width of KIX4OTRS operation area will be continued by KIX. Additionally, KIX will be available for different areas – starting with on-premise environment and up to the private or public cloud.

„Against all problems with OTRS as core product, we achieved to position our modular extensions with a high grade of innovation and stability successfully in the last years.“, says Rico Barth, managing director of the cape IT. „KIX will be an open system with a clear road map to make it possible for users and partners to participate in the software development. At the same time, it will be a reliable and functionally fully developed company software for technical service. We are confident that our open source software will shape the market of the service management solutions importantly.“

capeIT assures that KIX will be open source software, because it is a base for optimal, service-oriented business models of the 21st century. It also supports the idea of Internet of Things and its Sharing Economy.

The c.a.p.e. IT is located in Chemnitz, Saxony, Germany, and was founded als spin-off of a well-known international IT company in 2006. Due to many years of project experience of our ITIL-certified consultants and developers, we deliver services and products of high quality. We are a company with focus on service management and a professional provider of Open Source services and products.

In the German-speaking area, we are one of few companies that offer services for Open and Closed Source solutions within service management (OTRS, KIX4OTRS). This variety allows us to consult and support our clients in optimal way within integration of service processing, organisation, environment - independently whether it's about the customer care, IT service management (ITSM) or technical service. We tailor our software solutions and IT conceptions to our customers' requirements and business processing. Our customers value this approach.

Rico Barth, managing director
c.a.p.e. IT GmbH
Schönherrstr. 8, D-09113 Chemnitz
http://www.cape-it.de/press
Tel: +49 371 27095 620
Fax: +49 371 27095 625

This release was published on openPR.