Introducing: Kopano One

October 29, 2020

Today we're introducing a new product: Kopano One. A major milestone for us, where our team has put in tons of time and effort to get it done in the right way. It is the first, but a very big step towards making Kopano super-easy to install and maintain.

What is it?

Kopano One is, in its essence, a new edition of Kopano. It comes with new packaging that takes a lot of effort away from the system administrator when it comes to fresh installations and updates, it ensures the system is performant and configured securely, with little knowledge required.

Why did we do it?

While Kopano One is a new way of delivering our products, most of the components were previously known. Getting the system up and running in a good way was considered a tedious task by system administrators. With this new method of distributing our software, we aim to make things much easier for everyone.

We set a goal of making Kopano easy to install and maintain for installations with up to 250 users. We aimed to make the setup performant for these user numbers and at the same time ensuring that it remains easy to set up a system with state of the art security measures.

A second, but not less important part of Kopano One is that we’re creating a selection of versions that will be maintained for an extended period of time. Kopano One will receive bugfixes and security updates for a year (until end of September 2021). (Of course, those customers that want to use the latest and greatest features Kopano projects have to offer can continue to install individual projects as they have done many years before.

What is in it & How can I get it?

Kopano One comes with a predefined set of components. Kopano server and webapp are included, as is support for ActiveSync through Z-Push. IMAP, CalDAV and CardDAV are the protocols that are offered for third-party clients.

  • Kopano Konnect: our OpenID Connect provider, used for authentication in WebApp as well as all the clients to be introduced in the future
  • Kopano Kweb: a Kopano-provided web server with all the optimization for security and performance built-in
  • Kopano Kustomerd: the new component that deals with licenses and statistical reporting for all different types of Kopano software
  • For a new installation, you’ll need to follow the instructions that can be found here.
  • For existing users we’re working describing the direct upgrade path. Easiest would be a fresh installation and using backup/restore. The upgrade path description is to be expected later this year.

At this moment, Kopano One is only available for Debian 10. We’re working on availability on RHEL8 and CentOS8 as well. This takes a bit longer than anticipated but we want to do it right. Other distributions might be added later. In the upcoming months, there will be more Kopano One related releases. One that is currently in the works is an installation wizard that will help you through the process of installing, configuring and maintaining your installation.