Standard, Multi-Domain and Hosted Kolab

Kolab Groupware is a flexible collaboration suite and in addition to its standard deployment, also supports both multi-domain and hosted deployments.

The difference between a standard Kolab Groupware environment, a multi-domain, and a hosted deployments is as follows:

Standard

A standard deployment of Kolab Groupware is designed to serve a single organization’s collaboration needs.

This includes features such as Shared Folders and Resource Management, Invitation Policies and Delegation, and Recipient Policies and Distribution Groups.

A standard Kolab Groupware deployment also supports alias domain name spaces, meaning that a setup for a domain name space of example.org can let its users have additional recipient email addresses in an alias domain name space of beispiel.de, voorbeeld.nl and/or exemple.ch.

Multi-Domain

A multi-domain deployment of Kolab Groupware is designed to serve multiple organizations’ collaboration needs based on a single deployment of Kolab Groupware.

This is to say that an organization such as Business, Inc. with a primary domain name space of business.co.uk can use the same infrastructure as an organization Competitor, Ltd. with a primary domain name space of competitor.de.

Each of these organizations may, aside from their primary domain name space, hold one or more alias domain name spaces (rendering the primary domain name space a parent domain name space).

While the two organizations use the same deployment and the same infrastructure, information of neither organization may become available to the other organization – accidentally nor otherwise.

Multi-domain deployments are designed specifically such that there is a clear boundary between the spaces in which the users of each organization collaborate.

However, not all of the most recent features added to Kolab Groupware are immediately also available to multi-domain environments. Resource Management for example is one of such recent features. This is why a default setup is not already configured to be or become a multi-domain setup, and the HOWTO for multi-domain is community-contributed.

Hosted Kolab

A hosted Kolab Groupware deployment is very similar to a multi-domain deployment, but allows users (customers) to register accounts and domains themselves, and adds revenue to the deployment by invoicing the customers.

Allowing customers to create accounts brings with it a set of additional requirements, such as new users confirming either one of the identifying pieces of information (a phone number, an email address or even just a physical address), which in your jurisdiction you may or may not be required to request.

Furthermore, for customers that register a domain name space, you’ll need to be able to confirm the customer’s ownership of that domain name space.