[ for immediate release ] June 20th, 2005

Kolab 2 Groupware released

"With our focus on native offline-capable clients, Kolab 1 had brought a new approach to the groupware world," explains Bernhard Reiter, CEO of Intevation GmbH and project coordinator. "With this second generation, users can now share their groupware folders even with users that use Outlook when they are using KDE and vice versa." Additional new features are support for servers at several locations, usability, speed improvements, support for spam-control and anti virus software. The new stable release 2.0 has been about two years in coming as 1.0 has been released in mid 2003. Beta versions of Kolab 2.0 have undergone intensive testing in the last 6 months.

"Kolab owes its scalability to its concept", explains Martin Konold senior partner at erfrakon, who designed the Kolab architecture, "all groupware data is stored on the IMAP server in MIME structures instead of using a traditional database. Thanks to the smart client concept, most CPU-intensive operations are performed on the client. Cyrus, the chosen IMAP server software, also allows for an on-the-fly backup of the IMAP store."

The Kolab-Konsortium will present the Kolab Solution at LinuxTag in Karlsruhe (Booth B81, Intevation GmbH) this week. Additionally, Bernhard Reiter will give a presentation on thursday, 13:00-14:00h.

Kolab has an active and growing community that can be reached via several active mailinglists as well as the Kolab Wiki at wiki.kolab.org. Enterprise-level support is available from the Kolab Konsortium.

All daily administration tasks can be performed via a web interface. The OpenPKG environment makes the server easy to deploy on all kinds of GNU/Linux distributions and Unix derivates. Just like its predecessor, Kolab 2 is based on well-proven Free Software server components, such as Apache, Postfix, Cyrus imapd and OpenLDAP.

Windows users can keep their Outlook installation: The Toltec Connector 2.0 turns Outlook into a fully-fledged Kolab 2 client at low cost. Additionally, a special convenience package of Kontact, the KDE Groupware client, has been made available. It has undergone special testing by the Kolab-Konsortium and can be used with KDE 3.2 and higher. Users that cannot upgrade to KDE 3.4.1 should use this package for client deployment. Kontact is a feature-complete Kolab 2 client.

"A unique property of the Kolab Project is that it uses existing proven components and works very closely with the associated Free Software communities." says Kalle Dalheimer, CEO of Klarälvdalens Datakonsult AB, the company that did the actual software implementation. "For example, our KDE Kolab client benefits from the full S/MIME capabilities for email signatures and encryption done by a different project."

In addition to the native clients a Kolab-compliant web interface based on the Horde Framework is in beta stage and will become available later in 2005.

About the Kolab Konsortium:
	The Kolab Konsortium was founded by Intevation GmbH, Klarälvdalens Datakonsult AB and erfrakon Partnerschaftsgesellschaft, the creators of Kolab. The Konsortium offers courses, consultancy, development and enterprise-level support for the Kolab server and clients. It works together with Radley Network Technologies CC (open file-format for the Toltec Connector) and Code Fusion CC. Read more about the Kolab Konsortium at www.kolab-konsortium.de
	Press Contact: Bernhard Reiter Phone: +49-541-3350830 info@kolab-konsortium.de
About KDE:
	KDE is a powerful Free Software graphical desktop environment for GNU/Linux and Unix workstations. It combines ease of use, modern functionality, and outstanding graphical design with the technological superiority of the Unix operating system. Read more about KDE at www.kde.org.
	Press Contact: Matthias Kalle Dalheimer Phone: +46-563-540023 info@kde.org