GAL, Improved Antispam for Kerio MailServer

Kerio Technologies this week announced Kerio MailServer 6.7, the latest update to its Exchange Server alternative targeted specifically at small-to-midsized businesses (SMBs). This time around, the company has added a Global Address List (GAL), improved the antispam filtering capability, and added new features for Entourage and Mac OS X users. In addition, Kerio has also introduced the Kerio IMAP Migration Tool.

"Our experience has been that if you have 40 to 50 employees plus, then it makes perfect sense to maintain that information in a single place such as Active Directory," said Dusan Vitek, vice president of worldwide marketing for Kerio. "We're seeing that it's very common for larger SMBs to utilize Microsoft Active Directory. Because we support Active Directory natively—our Kerio MailServer syncs with Active Directory, or authenticates against Active Directory—you don't need to duplicate records across different systems."

Users of Microsoft Exchange Server with Outlook of course will be familiar with the concept of the GAL and the benefits such a feature brings. But the Kerio GAL doesn't necessarily require Active Directory; as a cross-platform mail server, it also integrates with Apple Open Directory or Kerio's built-in user directory. Changes or additions to the underlying directory are dynamically synchronized to the GAL.

Stepping it up on the security front, Kerio MailServer 6.7 features an improved antispam gateway that can take advantage of multi-CPU server systems and gains speed from parallel processing of email messages. The implementation of the Bayesian heuristics has been beefed up as well.

For Mac users of Kerio MailServer, the latest versions brings an autoconfigure tool for Entourage. It also fixes a problem with iCal to prevent sharing details from private calendar events. And you can now sync Address Book on Macs with Kerio MailServer. Furthering its cross-platform applicability, Kerio MailServer 6.7 adds support for Debian 5 and Ubuntu 8.04 LTS Linux.

Last fall, Kerio introduced the Kerio Exchange Migration Tool. This time around, it's the Kerio IMAP Migration Tool, once again making it easier to change your mail system to Kerio's. This new tool can be used on Windows, Mac, or Linux systems to transfer domains, accounts, folders, and email messages from any local or hosted IMAP server to Kerio MailServer.

In addition to its cross-platform support, Kerio MailServer is also available as a virtual appliance using either VMware or Parallels. As Vitek said, "Our small customers typically don't do this, but it seems a fairly common practice for larger SMBs to adopt virtualization and run Kerio MailServer in a virtual environment."

You can find pricing and additional information on Kerio's website.

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