By popular demand, we are announcing the roadmap for Atmail’s future development. Over the past 9 months, we have been adding many new features to Atmail 6 and have ported the most important features from the previous release.

Improving Atmail’s mobile features is the focus of ongoing development this year. One of our main goals is Push support for synchronization of contacts, calendar data, and mail. We aim to fully support Windows Mobile, iPhones, Blackberrys and other devices using ActiveSync.

Microsoft’s ActiveSync technology will be used with Atmail to provide Push functionality. This will be an extra module for Atmail, with the pricing ranging from $3-$6 per user/year for complete Push support. The per-user pricing is required due to the licensing fees from Microsoft.

Our passion for open protocols is as bright as ever, however. So for calendaring and contact data, and will be announcing CardDAV support for Atmail’s address-book. This will include a full client/server implementation, allowing contact data to be synchronized from a growing number of devices and applications using open protocols.

And just in time. With Apple CardDAV support announcement for the next iPhone 4.0 update, and devices such as the Android are announcing CalDAV support, devices can have advanced groupware and calendaring features without the need for ActiveSync.

We see the need to develop next-generation interfaces for mobile devices. We aim to provide users a unified interface for Mail, Calendaring and Contact data, using browsers for mobile devices, built and optimized for the mobile platform. Later this year, we will be launching elegant messaging interfaces to support the Android, iPhone, and iPad platforms.

Finally, we are committed to improving the current Webmail and Admin user-interface of Atmail with additional features. The new Atmail Plugin Framework has allowed us to develop lots of cool plugins that can interface with Atmail: embedded maps in messages, thumbnails for MS Word/Excel docs attached to an email, and integration with 3rd party appliances such as Barracuda and more.

So, onto the Roadmap!

Major new features:

• New mobile Webmail interfaces (iPad, iPhone, Andorid) - Sept
• Activesync PUSH support - Aug
• CardDAV server support - Jul
• CardDAV client support - May

Major improvements:

• Redesigned Calendar user-interface (Day, Week, Work-week, Month) views - Sept
• SMS alerts for message filters via Sieve - Aug
• Additional API methods ( logs, purge accounts, contact, calendar data ) - Jul
• Abook and Calendar import data - Support for more formats, CSV and ICS files - Jul
• Webadmin - Massmail user-interface for local accounts - Jun
• Webadmin - View verbose log files and advanced search - Jun
• Calendar alarm notification in Webmail UI - May

Ongoing developments:

• CSS Skins for the Atmail UI - Switch the color theme of the user-interface - July
• Improving the Atmail Webmail UI - Usability, additional options, advanced features - Ongoing

That’s our general roadmap for development. While not set in stone, our main focus will be bringing ActiveSync and CardDAV features into Atmail. Please feel free to comment on our ideas - and if you think one feature should have greater priority, let us know!

We are proud to introduce the Atmail Virtual Server Appliance (AVSA), a virtual machine created for VMWare® virtualization software.

With AVSA, you have:

Zero-time setup.  All you need to do is open the file via VMware. That’s it.

No long winded installation processes. No configuration. No compiling. No need to fiddle with hardware. Just start the virtual machine, put it on the network, and you’re good to go.

Turn key. Use AVSA to provide a turn-key messaging platform with, Webmail, POP3/IMAP services, SMTP, Calendaring features, CalDAV, Groupware and more.

Lightweight. For a complete messaging solution, the AVSA weighs in at a very lean 700MB download. Featuring all the components you could need in an email server and an entire Linux distribution, in space just barely over what you can fit in a CD.

Breezy backups. Using VMware® snapshot utilities, making backups for your AVSA installation is fluid and easy. Restoring from backups? Even more so. No more worrying about synchronizing files, or creating backup cronjobs, or failover mechanisms. It’s all available at a press of a button.

Click’n'deploy. Download a copy from the Atmail evaluation page, existing clients can license ASVA with their previous Atmail serial-key, and a free 5-user license is available for evaluation users. Read the install guide for setup details.

Comments? Let us know!

With this release we focused mainly on fixing issues raised, and revising code to make the UI and backend faster to use. Two major new features are included, Address Book Group support from the message composer & recurrence ability in the Calendar for repeat events.

Atmail 6 now includes intelligent client-side caching of various data requested from the server further improving UI performance while reducing the load on the back-end server. Overall calendar performance has improved, and with UI caching now activated, the UI feels a lot quicker to use.

We have also enhanced the Webmail and Webadmin with additional new icons for actions and toolbars further refining the user-interface.

New Features:

• Calendar now has recurring event functionality (daily, weekly, monthly, yearly) - Publish recurring events in Atmail, and push these to your iPhone or CalDAV client
• Contact Groups now available in the message composer auto-complete list
• New language packs for Atmail - Arabic, Catalan, Simplified Chinese
• New user-interface icons for the Webmail and Admin interface
• Calendar back-end and Javascript code revised to improve performance

Improvements:

• Client side Javascript caching implemented dramatically improving the speed and usability of the UI
• Installer now properly handles more error events and environments
• Warns if you try to send an email while attachments are still uploading
• Various improvements to the Websync plugin for stability

Issues Fixed:

• A host of small bugs in the backend and UI
• Bugs in IMAP migration script fixed
• Various XSS vulnerabilities fixed
• Various UI issues in IE7 and IE8 fixed
• Fixed login performance with calendar client UI
• Improved cache removal function for atmail temporary directory

We recommend all existing customers to upgrade to the new Atmail 6.1.7 - Follow these steps to update your install in under 5 minutes.

Spending more time making your system work than using it?

The Atmail Cloud is for you.

Featuring Calendar services compatible with most mobile devices, comprehensive Groupware support, a fully customizable API for managing accounts and an Outlook-compatible WebSync utility, the Atmail Cloud is not just an email server. It’s a full messaging ecosystem.

To date, the Atmail Cloud has been used by over 90,000 mailboxes worldwide. Using the same engine as Atmail 6, the Atmail Cloud offers an elegant interface that is a joy to use for both users and administrators. With very little cost and effort needed to get Atmail Cloud setup for your domain, making the switch is easy.

So go ahead. Make your mail.