July 25th, 2003, Osnabrück
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[ for immediate release ]
July 25th, 2003, Osnabrück |
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The three companies behind the Kroupware Project (Erfrakon, Intevation and Klarälvdalens Datakonsult) announced its successful completion today. This new groupware approach using only Free Software is now available in stable versions under the Kolab brand name. Commercial support on an individual basis is already offered with further support options to come.
The Kolab system offers common asynchronous groupware functions such as email, group calendaring, notes and tasks. Stable releases of the software can be downloaded from the website.
Kolab Server 1.0 is designed to be very scalable benefitting from already matured Free Software components like Cyrus IMAPd, Postfix, Apache and OpenLDAP. "Our design is completely based on open standards and compatibility", says Martin Konold, whose company Erfrakon developed the Kolab architecture. "This is why we can even interact with Outlook, using the iCalender formats to invite people crossplatform and exchange contacts using vCard files." Security aspects have been included from the beginning. Thus, the whole communication between the server and the clients is done via encrypted connections.
The KDE Kolab Client in version 1.0.1 draws upon the corresponding KDE components KMail, KOrganizer, KAddressbook and KPilot. These parts have been integrated to talk with the server. In addition the client has been made fully offline capable. Klarälvdalens Datakonsult AB, the company of Kalle Dalheimer employing many distinguished KDE developers performed the necessary work on the client side. "We closely cooperated with the KDE community," adds Klarälvdalens' Lead developer Bo Thorsen, "the high quality of GUI components maintained by the community made it possible for us to assemble a feature-rich groupware client in such a short timeframe."
"Kolab has undergone a significant period of testing and bugfixing in the last month", explains Bernhard Reiter, managing director of Intevation and responsible project manager. "We now believe that it has reached a stable state and will make Free Software much more attractive for the office desktop."
The Kroupware project has been started in september 2002 after the three companies won a contract to set up a quality in-house groupware solution for the German "Bundesamt für Sicherheit in der Informationstechnik" (Federal Agency for IT Security, BSI).
Apart from kroupware.kolab.org which documents the project itself, there is an emerging community around the Kolab approach which organises itself over the mailinglists and the www.kolab.org website.
About the companies: | |
| Erfrakon is a consulting company dedicated to Free Software and GNU/Linux servers. A speciality is support for high availability servers and clusters. |
| Intevation GmbH is an IT-company exclusively focusing on Free Software. Its business units are strategic consulting, project management and geographic information systems. |
| Klarälvdalens Datakonsult AB is offering professional services, support and cross-platform development with the Qt library and KDE. |
About KDE: | |
| KDE is the network transparent award winning desktop environment for GNU/Linux or other unix-like operating systems. It combines ease of use, functionality, and outstanding graphical design to bring a complete Free Software based workplace to users worldwide. KDE itself is available in more than 50 languages. The development is done in the open and coordinated over the Internet. |
Bernhard Reiter <bernhard.reiter@intevation.de> Phone: ++ 49 541 33 508 33