A hardware raid is managed by the hardware RAID card, not by the open-e software, although the open-e software provides access to the RAID management features of your RAID card, either through a web gui or a command line. The RAID card hides all the disks from the operating system unless they are configured as pass-through or JBOD devices. It exports each RAID volume (a group of disks acting as one) to the operating system (open-e) as if it were a big disk drive. Since a hardware RAID is accomplished on a separate RAID card with its own storage processor, it can leave more CPU left over for other tasks by the main system CPU. Historically, hardware RAIDs are faster than software RAIDs.
Software RAID is accomplished entirely with the operating system (open-e, in this case). In fact, you can even make a software RAID out of the hardware RAID volumes, in essence nesting a RAID array inside a RAID array (I do NOT recommend this, but it is possible). A software RAID uses the main system CPU to do the RAID calculations, so it can slow down other applications (which is not as much of a factor with open-e or if you have a multi-cpu/core system). Historically, software RAIDs are slower than hardware RAIDs, although this is not universally the case.
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Software vs Hardware RAID
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