Munich Adopts Kolab

Mar 05, 2014

By Paul Brown

The Bavarian capital shuns Microsoft, Google, and other alternatives to implement an open source groupware solution.

The capital of Bavaria continues its gradual move away from all things closed, and is deploying Kolab, an open source groupware solution that will handle all emails, contacts, calendars, task tracking for Munich city workers. The Kolab system, developed and maintained by the Swiss company Kolab Systems AG, is free to download, install, distribute, and modify and will be deployed on over 14,000 PCs running LiMux, Munich's own flavor of Linux. Kolab will also be gradually deployed on the few remaining Windows machines still running in Town Hall. Alternatives, such as Microsoft's Exchange, and cloud-based systems, such as those offered by Google, raised serious security and privacy concerns. Hence the decision to go with a solution that can be installed and hosted internally, on the Town Hall's own servers, with the added advantage of not incurring in expensive licenses or vendor lock-in.

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