After more than two years of development to Horde open source project has released version 4.0 of its integrated groupware and webmail suites.

After nearly three years of development the fourth generation of the Horde open source e-mail and groupware suite was released this week bringing with it a more modern code base and social networking features.

Messaging and groupware is at the heart of business and applications most people use everyday. While the big names like Microsoft Exchange, Lotus Notes and Google Apps are increasing their influence, enterprises have several viable open source options. Of course, there plenty of complaints about the quirks and complications of the bi- name groupware suites so perhaps it’s time to give the lesser-known options a try. In this installment of 5 open source things to watch, we take a look at open source groupware suites which can communicate without costing the farm.

Google has created a free tool to simplify and automate the migration of e-mail, calendar and contacts data from Microsoft Exchange servers to its Google Apps collaboration and communication hosted suite.

Open-source collaboration software vendor Open-Xchange has integrated VoIP (voice over Internet Protocol) and social networking sites in the latest version of its e-mail server and client.

The Horde open source messaging and groupware project is gearing up for the first major release of its application suite and development environment in years with version 4 due in mid-2010.