Kerio launches rebranded Connect 7 groupware server 9 February, 2010 By Mark Cox

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Kerio now has a security line as well as its' traditional mail server product, but this was its' original product back when it launched. But customer demand has changed since then, and now, so has this product.

"We have not had distributed domains before, and this is something that has been requested by partners and customers for a long time," said John Jones, Sales Engineer for Kerio Technologies' Cambridge, U.K. office.

Distributed domains are especially advantageous for organizations with branch offices in different physical locations. While companies often install separate messaging servers in offices located in other cities or countries for performance, security or compliance reasons, they often lose the benefits of a single collaboration server -- most notably the ability to see the availability of coworkers in other offices. Kerio Connect 7 allows companies to join their Kerio Connect servers into a single geographically dispersed cluster with servers aware of each other's user groups, individual user's availability, shared contacts in Global Address Lists, or shared resources such as conference rooms. Inter-office contact sharing and calendar event scheduling thus become much easier.

"With Kerio Connect you can leverage existing infrastructure, without an administrator having to set up anything complicated," Jones said.

This management of distributed domains is an integral part of a newly introduced web-based Administration Console, providing complete remote management of Kerio Connect 7 from any modern browser.

"It lets admins see across the organization," Jones said. "It scales down to satellite office but also scales up into the hundreds."

This also lets Kerio, traditionally an SMB player, establish more of a footprint in midsize, multi-office deployments.

" It expands the sweet spot a little bit," said Josh Turiel, managing partner of Beverly MA-based J.H. Turiel & Associates, a Kerio partner. "It definitely takes in some enterprises that might have been a little bit out of range before."

Turiel said that the key thing from his angle, is that Kerio Connect 7 is fully cross-platform, including client and server side.

"I have a lot of cross platform clients, and this just works -- as well as Snow Leopard doesn't," Turiel said.

Turiel also emphasized that Kerio Connect 7 provides all the functions of a traditional groupware system like Microsoft Exchange.

"The difference is Exchange has a lot more on top of it, and it's more expensive," he said.

Jones noted that resellers will often add Kerio Connect 7 in just for collaboration and contact.

"Customers today don't want just a mail server, they want a collaboration server, and the branding change will help there," Jones said.

Kerio Connect 7 also adds the new open source protocol CardDAV for address book synchronization.

"With CardDAV, we've made sure the configuration is very easy," Jones said. "It gives access to all contacts, shared contacts or global address lists."

Apple Address Book, a CardDAV-compliant client in Mac OS X Snow Leopard, now syncs contacts directly with Kerio Connect 7. A configuration utility available through Kerio WebMail helps users setup their Address Book in a few clicks.

Kerio Connect 7 is available now from Kerio partners worldwide. It starts at $USD 450 for 5 users, with additional users starts at $24. Kerio Connect 7 runs on Windows, Linux, Mac OS X, and is also available as a VMware Virtual Appliance and Parallels Virtual Appliance.