After the annual Atmail “Hackfest” this August in Peregian Beach Australia the development team have announced the future roadmap of Atmail. Our labs have some exciting new products and developments brewing!

We will be reinventing the core of Atmail for the version 6.x, with a new backend using the PHP Zend framework, a complete new Webmail client based on a single interface with CSS to re-skin, and improved Groupware features to make Atmail an even more competitive option for an Exchange alternative under Linux.

Atmail 6.X release - ETA April 2009

• Rewrite using the PHP Zend framework - Using the MVC model
• New API and improved backend
• Completely new Webmail interface which is more modernized and a common interface that supports all browsers. With an emphasis on CSS skinning and rebranding
• Redesign Webadmin interface to streamline deployments and administration
• Improved Groupware features
• Plugin support - API structure to create extendable plugins for Atmail
• Using open standards for Calendaring (iCal) and synchronization (SyncML)
• Groupware and synchronization support for Outlook, Thunderbird, iCal and other clients
• Enhanced mobility options - Blackberry support, iPhone and more

The new 6.X release of Atmail will be a major milestone in the development of Atmail. Our development team will be redesigning the core of Atmail based on our experience of been in the industry for over 8 years. You can look forward to see an enhanced Atmail version, and designed on a platform to see the software forge ahead in the years to come.
In the meantime we will be enhancing the current 5.X release of Atmail with the following new features and enhancements:

Atmail 5.5 release - ETA Dec 2008

• Blackberry support included via Funambol
• Native LDAP support for user authentication and administration
• Migration of Courier-IMAP to Dovecot for the mail-server edition of Atmail. Based on performance and functionality
• Enhanced Atmail Cluster edition with GFS and Xen support
• Improved support for other Linux distributions ( Ubuntu, Debian )

In addition to the new Atmail re-write, our development team will be releasing another two surprising products under the Atmail banner early 2009 - Keep tuned for product news and developments from the Atmail labs!

AtMail Open is now available via FreeBSD Ports! Installation via FreeBSD Ports is very easy. You may need to update your ports collection first, but on your FreeBSD machine simply type:

# cd /usr/ports/mail/atmail
# make install

Your AtMail Open system, including dependencies will be setup and almost ready to roll. All you need to do now is follow the post install instructions given by the port to configure Apache and then point your browser to AtMail, run through the web-based installer for final configuration and your done.

If your using FreeBSD but either don’t have access to Ports or would rather not use it then there is a nice install guide for AtMail Open on FreeBSD here.

Thanks to wenheping for creating/maintaining the port.

In light of Gmail’s recent outage and downtime, Lisa Hoover from Linux.com summed this up brilliantly in her blog:

“If Gmail keeps your business’ wheels turning, then you can’t afford to cross your fingers and just hope nothing ever happens that will lop off large chunks of email you’ve archived or saved. The number one thing you can do to protect your data is back it up. If you use Gmail, it’s a dead simple process. Just download it locally every day, then include it in your company’s nightly off-site backup routine. You do have an off-site backup routine, right?

If it’s not archives, but incoming mail you’re panicked about missing, then consider ways to build email redundancy into your infrastructure. Any commercial email platform vendor worth its salt will have triple-secure systems in place to make sure your mail is never lost or misdirected. Sure, a service like Atmail or SureMail comes with a price tag whereas Gmail is free, but, hey, Gmail is also still a beta product. Do you want to trust your company’s most vital communication tool to something that’s still under development?”

Since email is the critical communication backbone for business, shouldn’t your company consider hosting your critical mail “in-house” on secure servers you control? Rather than trusting your company email infrastructure to “the cloud” ?

Order Atmail instead.

We are proud to announce the second update to the AtMail Open-source edition, version 1.02. The open-source edition has received a welcomed response from the community seeking an improved Ajax Webmail client, and we value all our user feedback since we released the first edition in May 08.

Download the new release at: http://atmail.org/download.php

The new 1.02 release contains SSL IMAP support, enhanced security / local file permissions, and various other tweaks. The complete changelog follows:

• Added support for IMAPs (Secure IMAP using SSL)
• Added upgrade script
• Moved default location of IMAP debug file to avoid security risk of other users accessing it at /tmp/popimap_debug
• Improved Subject/From filters, can now accept any chars for rule
• Added htmlentities() on email body for plain text content
• Folder names with ampersands now supported
• Improved .eml naming, now uses subject as filename
• Auto add quotes around ‘real-name’ part of email addresses returned from composebook
• Fixed bad return value in IMAP_Client::deleteMailbox()
• Updated lang packs
• Added ‘onEmailSent’ plugin hook to sendmail.php
• Fixed pagination issue for email listing (no longer repeats last email on next page)
• Fixed attachment filename encoding
• Spell check now uses value defined in $pref[’aspell_path’] rather than hard coded ‘aspell’
• Filename extension check for abook import is now case insensitive
• Auto adds scroll bar when search results are longer than container
• Fixed charset conversion for GB2312 (Simplified Chinese)

Upgrading couldn’t be simplier! Extract the new version into your existing Atmail-open directory, then run

http://yourserver.com/atmailopen/upgrade.php

The upgrade.php script is located in the base atmailopen directory, and will update the local MySQL DB with the latest fields and update the Config.php file for the new release. Once run, the upgrade is now complete.

Corey and I spent the better part of this week in beautiful downtown Chicago for HostingCon.  Overall I think the show was a great success for us individually and as a company.  Getting out to mingle and network with such a focused group of people is such a wonderful way to grasp the pulse of the industry.  It was also a wonderful way to get to know some of our existing customers that also attended the show and hear how they have deployed AtMail first hand.  We received excellent feedback on what people really liked about the software as well as what people would like to see in the next versions.

Above: Jason Brown fine tunes the AtMail Cluster.

Hopefully we’ll get to see everyone again next year in Washington DC for HostingCon 2009!!!