The new Kerio Connect 7, previously known as Kerio MailServer, marks the messaging server’s entry into the market of midsize, multi-office deployments, giving customers an option to link standalone servers into a single distributed domain system.

 The advantages of a distributed domain become apparent 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 conference rooms. 

The 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. 

New contact list sync via CardDAV

Kerio Connect 7 continues to push toward open standards in messaging and collaboration with the implementation of a new open source protocol CardDAV for address book synchronization.  

“CardDAV is for address books what CalDAV is for calendars – a straightforward way to sync up contacts among various applications, servers, laptops and phones that you use for work or fun,” says Dusan Vitek, vice president of Worldwide Marketing at Kerio Technologies Inc. “The ever-growing adoption of smartphones in the corporate and consumer markets raises expectations, which users have about interoperability.” 

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.