Email: "The rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated"

Despite all of the fanfare over Google Glass, at the end of the day work needs to get done, and as of 8:00 this morning, we are still going to dive into our inboxes. Furthermore, while a growing segment of the business world is turning to hosted email in the "cloud" (including many of our customers), many businesses and Managed Service Providers (the vast majority in fact) are hosting it themselves. For these trend buckers, we are happy to provide the latest version of Kerio Connect.

When to Email, When to IM

Today's launch of Kerio Connect 8.1 brings instant messaging capabilities into the corporate realm and behind the firewall. While you may want to use your personal Skype or Yahoo Messenger because it's simple, in business you may not want to be known as BeerDude1980 to your colleagues. Having a business email address on your favorite IM network is a better way to go. So now that Kerio Connect provides both email and IMs via its server, the question is: when do you IM and when do you email?

The answer...it depends. Let's take a look at the pros and cons of each.

Email

Hey EAS, You're Not the Boss of Me and Neither is My Girlfriend

A lot of people have said moving to protocols like CalDAV and CardDAV for syncing email, contacts, calendar, tasks and notes from Kerio Connect to your mobile device is a sacrifice. Many have said Microsoft's Exchange ActiveSync (EAS) is a superior option.

I thought the same thing until I got my first iPhone with Siri support. I noticed quickly that CalDAV and CardDAV support a few things that EAS doesn't, including calendar colors across devices, multiple alarms, and broader attributes for contacts.

Exchange ActiveSync Becomes a Paid Service in Kerio Connect

Why are we doing this? It's the popularity of iPhone and Android. We analyzed mobile usage patterns and saw that iOS (iPhone and iPad) accounts for about 70% of mobile devices used with Kerio Connect, followed by Android - and most of these are configured with Exchange ActiveSync (EAS).

50 Shades of Greylisting

For all of you email security fetishists out there, I wanted to highlight one of the less headline-grabbing (but critical) features in Kerio Connect 8. In the eternal war on spam, Kerio has implemented a wide variety of technologies and techniques designed to limit the amount of unwanted email that reaches the inbox.

Long live email, but desktop email clients are dead (or at least dying)

Is corporate email dead? Take a look at your inbox, and I think you’ll realize the answer is no. However, there is no question email is evolving, and collaboration products like Kerio Workspace will change (for the better) the way organizations use email. We know email attachments are the spawn of the devil, and I’m anxiously awaiting for the era of back and forth discussions via email about projects coming to an end.

Introducing Kerio APIs Client Library for PHP version 1.2

Based on your feedback, we are proud to introduce a new release of Kerio APIs Client Library for PHP which contains a brand new technical demonstration of how to use another piece of the Kerio APIs - Kerio Connect Client.

Please note that this Kerio Connect client API is currently under development and might change in the future.

Open standards for Mobile Email – And Kerio's Thoughts on BES

Mobile email five years ago and today look very different. While it used to be that RIM and Microsoft were the only game in town, today's mobile email landscape provides robust alternatives because of open standards like CalDAV and CardDAV.

Kerio Connect 7.4 Gives You a Good Excuse to Buy the new iPad

If you're a regular reader of this blog, there is a pretty good chance you already own an iPad. However, if you don't have one yet, or if you have one and are looking for a way to start being productive with it, today's launch of Kerio Connect 7.4 is for you.

Important Product News:

Today (April 12), Microsoft updated Office for Mac 2011 to version 14.2.0 (also labeled as Service Pack 2). This update affects Outlook 2011 and it is not yet supported by Kerio Connect. We recommend that customers do not install this update yet.

If you already have installed the update, you’ll need to remove Microsoft Office directory from the Applications folder and re-install Microsoft Office for Mac from original medium.