E-mails as an electronic means of communication is
facing an increasing competition from media such as messaging, VoIP and social
media. While the market leaders Microsoft and IBM offer independent products for
the synchronic forms of communication such as Lync and Sametime, CommuniGate is
bundling its various technologies in a messaging server of the same name. Also on
board are the most important groupware functions such as address and task
management and calendar.
Most of the established messaging solutions such as Exchange, Zimbra, Kerio or Open
Xchange are far more than just a mail server and also offer e.g. collaboration
functions. But in most cases the offer ends at this point. Those who want to use
instant messaging, phone calls via internet or even file sharing generally have to
apply additional products. This increases the management efforts and the user has
to come to terms with several clients.
Unified Communications With A Single Product
The approach of CommuniGate however is to bundle all communication services under a
single user interface and to render each user accessible under his unique address,
whatever the channel.
CommuniGate Pro considers itself as the communication centre within the company and
offers also phone calls via internet, instant messaging, display of the online
status, SMS, online conferences as well as file-sharing in a client server system
in addition to the classic tools such as e-mails, group calendars, address-book and
task management.
The data that exist within the groupware applications can be reused in other parts
of the program. A phone-call for example, coming in during a meeting that was fixed
in the calendar will automatically be redirected to the answering machine,
appointment reminders can be sent via instant messaging or SMS or carried out as
automatic calls.
Support For All Established Standards The system generally backs common standards, protocols and interfaces. SMTP, POP3
and IMAP serve as e-mail connection, WebDAV and CalDAV for the exchange of dates,
SIP/RTP and XMPP of telephony or the instant messaging. With the help of XMPP and
SIP CommuniGate Pro is able to exchange with other systems such as ICQ, AIM, Yahoo
via corresponding gateways. Due to the standard conformity, almost all common clients for mail, appointment
management, messaging and the like can connect to CommuniGate Pro. Outlook users,
too, can stick to their accustomed program and use CommuniGate Pro by merely
downloading and installing the MAPI plug-in. Established XMPP and SIP clients,
too, enable access to the unified communications server.
Web- and Flash-Client
For a platform independent use of the system CommuniGate delivers a WebClient based
on HTML basis with various skins and layouts as well as the fully adequate Client
Pronto! As flash application the last-mentioned is available in two flavours: as
zero-install program or desktop application, which requires Adobe AIR on the PC and
goes through a corresponding installation.
The client uses the XIMSS Protocol for the communication with CommuniGate Pro.
Depending on the configuration of the specific user, Pronto!-Client delivers its
benefits as mail program, appointment calendar, task manager or transfers presence
information as well as instant messaging chats. If the PBX service for the user is enabled by using Pronto! he can answer or build
up telephone calls or use further telephony services such as answering machines,
call forwarding and alike. At the client that runs in the browser the user must
download an additional plug-in for telephony. Users without Flash fall back on either the simple web client, that is based upon
an old HTML standard, does not know Ajax and thus has to do without some functions
especially from the segment of the real-time communication (telephony, instant
messaging, presence). According to the manufacturer, a completely new HTML5 client
is currently in work.
Apps for Android and iOS
In contrast, users of mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets know the true
promise of native apps for iOS and Android that practically bring the entire
functional range on the device and make a mature impression with good operability. On demand, ActiveSync provided by CommuniGate ensures an automatic synchronisation
of mails, appointments between server and mobile. Blackberries can be aligned
over-the-air by using the optionally available AstraSync.
Conference and Video Calls
To make a call via VoIP a click on the entry of the desired call partner within the
address book is absolutely sufficient. In case of conferences with multiple
participants, the only thing that the user has to do is drag and drop the contacts
into the call window. Besides regular voice-calls video calls can be carried out, too, but only between
two participants. In addition to regular features of telephone systems such as
mailbox and answering machines as well as forwarding, also conference functions
including a virtual whiteboard which can be used by all participants for viewing
texts and images and exchanging information simultaneously can be used.
Integration with Social Media Furthermore, the system offers a multitude of additional features: the integrated
Media Player plays music, photos and videos directly. In his account the user can
manage these data independently, only limited by nothing else but the quota given
by the administrator. Web radio, RSS feeds as well as a client for Twitter, Facebook and Flickr round off
the range of features. The eDisk service establishes an online memory for each
user, where he can save and call data directly from his Pronto! Client, smartphones
or alternatively by WebDAV or FTO.
Installation and Management
The simple installation is carried out in a similar way at all operating systems:
The compressed file must be unpacked, after that the setup ensures that the server
system is installed in exactly two files - one for the program and another one for
settings and configuration. Then CommuniGate Pro starts an own web server, which first prepares the
administration console on port 8010 or 9010 (SSL) to avoid conflicts with a
possibly already existing HTTP server. The web client for users can be accessed via
the URL such as http://server:8100 or 9100 (SSL).
The administrator can now start connecting the server directly to the outside world
to define domains and create users with their accounts. A CommuniGate Pro Server
just needs a few minutes to get ready for operation, even if the somewhat
antiquated Web-GUI does not give any rise to joy. As an alternative, ambitious
administrators can use a powerful CLI for the configuration and management of the
system. Updates of the software just require a reinstallation of the program files with a
subsequent restart of the service. If CommuniGate Pro is run in the cluster, an
interruption-free update can be carried out by applying a rolling updating process.
Scalability and High Availability CommuniGate Pro was originally developed for internet providers. Via hosted
installations more than 150 million users worldwide are served. Accordingly, the
stability and performance even in case of high user figures played an important
role while designing the software. CommuniGate Pro keeps the SpecMail2001 record
for ISP Messaging and recommends itself as a highly stable mail server even under
high loads. To offer the maximum degree of scalability CommuniGate Pro supports a multi server
operation. It differentiates between two setups: On one hand there is the
partitioning mode, where user accounts are spread on various servers without
keeping a common data pool.
The system considers the Dynamic Cluster as the second and more efficient option,
that fall back on a shared storage, thus enabling higher flexibility and safety
through failover. In this configuration, there are up to 5 million users - an
impressive evidence for the effectiveness of the systems. E-mail traffic can be separated from the VoIP traffic by interconnecting the
telephony functions on dedicated servers to a so-called SIP farm. This helps to
maintain the quality of service for the language services even under adverse
conditions, such as an DoS attack or a spam wave. In contrast to many other solutions, CommuniGate Pro does not need a separate data
base to save the user data. All data such as mails, appointments, tasks and
addresses are saved separately as mails, so that administrators can benefit from a
large flexibility when saving and restoring data. Specific data-backup programs as
they are needed for Microsoft Exchange are not required.
Safety Functions and User Management
Users can connect to the server without an VPN tunnel by using SSL/TLS safely
whilst travelling. In this process, all ways of communication are automatically
encoded. Mail encoding using S/MIME is possible. All payloads saved on the server
are stored in an encoded form without explicit intervention of the administrator or
user. To protect from malware and spam, the administrator can engage programs of various
producers such as Kaspersky or McAfee as modules. Besides various other
possibilities, the authentication of clients can also be carried out via a RADIUS
server.
Problematic Relation with Repository Services
Generally, CommuniGate Pro is capable of using an LDAP server for saving and
managing domain data as well as user accounts for authentication. But this implies
functional restrictions - e.g. it does not work in dynamic clusters. The most serious aspect for many entrepreneurs is the very limited integration with
the Active Directory of Microsoft: Because of various schemes and incompatible
authentication mechanisms the AD cannot be used for the user management, so that
the CommuniGate accounts have to be hold separately in the groupware server. As a multi domain system, CommuniGate Pro supports a hierarchical domain
delegation with its web GUI, so that each domain can be managed by different
administrators.
CommuniGate Pro succeeds in combining user-friendliness and the great functionality
range of a system for unified communications. With Pronto! Client, it provides a
powerful communication centre that bundles all channels in a tool and enables
standardized use. Its relatively simple installation and modest demands to the hardware make it also
suitable for small companies. Its high availability functions and broad platform
support also make it interesting for large environments and hosting providers. The
producer promises a scaling of up to 200,000 users per server, depending on use
patterns and work intensity.
Also for companies that do not need unified communication in its pure sense,
CommuniGate Pro can provide an interesting option against established market
leaders such as Microsoft Exchange or Lotus Notes/Domino. Last but not least, the
prices are still cheap compared to the market. On the server side, CommuniGate Pro supports a strangely large range of operating
systems: Besides Windows it can also be installed on Linux, Solaris, Mac OS and
some more exotic systems such as FreeBSD. A localisation of the surface is
available in 20 languages.
Licensing and Prices
The Community Edition of CommuniGate Pro enables free use of the software by up to
5 users. This number can be exceeded without any limitation in the trial mode , but
then the software displays a note in all mails and telephone calls. The smallest
licence package includes 25 users and costs a one-off payment of 999 Euro excl.
VAT. The licence for 50 users costs 1449 Euro. The licence includes all functions.
Only optional anti-virus and anti-spam modules of various providers such as
Kaspersky, Sophos or McAfee must be purchased additionally.