The Advantages of Having A Kolab Subscription¶
Subscription-based support is available for Kolab from Kolab Systems AG. Kolab Systems is the primary developer and maintainer of Kolab, and provides enterprise-level design, deployment, development, and support for Kolab installations to public and private organizations of all sizes. Subscriptions are offered on a per-seat basis, and provide subscribers with distinct advantages.
The Benefits of Having a Kolab Subscription¶
Subscriptions are an excellent way to support the ongoing development of Kolab, as proceeds go directly into infrastructure Kolab development relies on as well as the employment of the core Kolab technical team.
But the most compelling aspect of subscriptions are the exclusive benefits that come with them. These advantages reliably lower the cost of ownership and increase overall reliability for the customer, including:
Access to rolling security and bugfix updates
Non-subscribers will need to update their Kolab installations annually to get the last year’s worth of fixes and improvements. Subscribers, on the other hand, benefit immediately from fixes as they become available between releases. Along with releases, all updates are cryptographically signed with Kolab System’s private GPG key allowing verification of the binaries.
Five years of extended support for each release
This is vitally important for production deployments, as significant changes may occur from one annual release to the next. Performing “update the world” upgrades to production systems every year can be a significant task and induce risk, both of which incur costs. Subscribers, on the other hand, can upgrade when it fits their interests best, secure in the knowledge that the version of Kolab they are currently running will be supported for years to come in that configuration.
And of course, all released packages are kept in perpetuity, which grants additional management flexibility, such as being able to downgrade specific components via the package manager if needed.
Professional support from Kolab Systems
If problems are encountered during setup, deployment, migration or production usage, you can access the expertise of Kolab Systems’ technical support team through your subscription privileges, such as access to our internal ticketing system. Subscribers also receive greater priority in the community support forums and other communication channels Kolab Systems maintains.
Professional services
Kolab Systems’ “Tiger Team” of specialists may be retained by those with active Kolab subscriptions. Services which are available on a per-project basis include deployment planning and management, infrastructure integration (e.g. with existing directory services, including Active Directory), custom development, and white-labeling. For deployments with special requirements or that need to scale reliably, this expertise in high-availability, load-balancing, cluster/cloud deployment, and integration is invaluable.
Subscribers also have greater influence over where Kolab Systems focuses development resources for upcoming releases in general.
Access to optimized system packages
By default, Kolab uses the stock packages for PHP, Apache HTTPD, MariaDB, openSSL and others that come with the base operating system. Kolab Systems engineers have made many improvements to the configuration and builds of these packages that are available exclusively to subscribers.
These optimizations ensure, for instance, that Roundcube scales well and that encryption is set up in the most secure way possible for Kolab’s needs. Every production environment benefits from this tuning and fitness work, and is only available to Kolab subscribers.
Have Questions or Comments?¶
We welcome feedback from our users, customers and partners. If you have any questions, concerns or comments about the information in this briefing, please do not hesitate to contact us by email at info@kolabsystems.com.