Category: Press Releases

Kolab and Collabora target streamlined Kolab filecloud connection at Kolab Summit

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The Kolab Summit in The Hague on May 2-3 sets the stage for intensified collaboration between Kolab Systems AG and Collabora Productivity.

The Kolab collaboration suite is a community driven, fully featured groupware solution. Born free, it has been the first choice of security oriented professionals for years, and seen adoption by companies and governments around the world, making it a leading corporate light in the field of Free Software and Open Standards.

LibreOffice-from-Collabora is the professionally supported, enterprise-hardened edition of the world’s most popular Open Source office suite. These two open source products are a natural fit, bringing communication and document editing together.

Users of LibreOffice-from-Collabora can already read and write Kolab-hosted documents directly via the Open Standard WebDAV protocol. To further improve the user experience and ease of configuration of LibreOffice products, engineers from the two companies will be working on an automated Kolab filecloud setup process at the Kolab Summit in a dedicated development room. Collabora is also an official Bronze sponsor of the event.

“This will not only bring an improved document workflow to users of both Kolab and LibreOffice-from-Collabora, but also serves as the first step towards future integration work involving these two leading Free software products,” noted Aaron Seigo, a senior technologist with Kolab Systems.

About Collabora Productivity:
Collabora Productivity delivers LibreOffice products and consulting. With the largest team of certified LibreOffice engineers, it is a leading contributor to the LibreOffice code base and community. LibreOffice-from-Collabora provides a business-hardened office suite with long term multi-platform support. Collabora Productivity is a division of Collabora Ltd., the global software consultancy specializing in providing the benefits of Open Source to the commercial world, specialising in automotive, semiconductors, digital TV and consumer electronics industries.
About Kolab Systems
Kolab Systems AG is an Open Source Independent Software Vendor (ISV) developing, maintaining, supporting and providing a wide range of services around the Kolab Groupware Solution. Fully committed to Open Source / Free Software and Open Standards, it is the global competency leader and custodian for a process open to community participation. The results of that process reach our customers as a quality assured solution that brings all the benefits true Open Source. Part of a company group that excels in security and cross platform solutions, Kolab Systems is prepared to provide you with the level of mission critical data integrity you deserve.

LibreOffice-from-Collabora launches in AWS Marketplace for Desktop Apps

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Collabora Productivity today launched a new edition of its enterprise office suite, LibreOffice-from-Collabora, for Amazon WorkSpaces users, available in AWS Marketplace for Desktop Apps. LibreOffice-from-Collabora brings support for more than 100 document formats, including Microsoft Office files, to virtual desktops on a range of operating systems and devices via the Amazon Web Services (AWS) edition. Maintenance and patch updates are included, while international code fix support is available from Collabora’s engineers, with competitive pricing for enterprises.

“We are pleased to welcome Collabora’s solutions to AWS Marketplace for Desktop Apps,” said Dave McCann, Vice President, AWS Marketplace, Amazon Web Services, Inc. “By making their software available in AWS Marketplace for Desktop Apps, Collabora’s users can take advantage of a streamlined selection and procurement process for high-performance desktop apps.”

The release furthers the expansion of LibreOffice-based products to new platforms, following Collabora’s LibreOffice Viewer for Android, published in January, and RollApp’s web-browser-based LibreOffice applications launched early last year.

“The global footprint of Amazon WorkSpaces virtual desktops in the AWS Cloud along with AWS Marketplace for Desktop Apps expands LibreOffice’s reach to an important, rapidly growing market,” said Michael Meeks, Vice President of Collabra Productivity. “Today’s launch means there are few customers LibreOffice cannot reach — whatever the platform, budget, or file-format, LibreOffice provides a competitive solution.”

About Collabora Productivity:
Collabora Productivity delivers LibreOffice products and consulting. With the largest team of certified LibreOffice engineers, it is a leading contributor to the LibreOffice code base and community. LibreOffice-from-Collabora provides a business-hardened office suite with long term multi-platform support. Collabora Productivity is a division of Collabora Ltd., the global software consultancy specializing in providing the benefits of Open Source to the commercial world, specialising in automotive, semiconductors, digital TV and consumer electronics industries.

IceWarp and Collabora Are Working on LibreOffice Online Document Editing, an Open Source Alternative to Google Apps, Office 365

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Through a project contributed by IceWarp on the principles of Free Software, LibreOffice Online will become the trusted free alternative to proprietary solutions

Springfield, Washington Metro Area and Cambridge, United Kingdom – March 25, 2015.

Collabora, a leading contributor to the popular LibreOffice productivity application, has partnered with IceWarp, the provider of global messaging and collaboration solutions, to jointly develop web-based document editing technology and contribute these to the thriving Free Software community around LibreOffice.

Highlights

  • IceWarp identified a growing demand for web-based and cloud-based document editing and collaboration, and selected LibreOffice as the leader in open standards productivity applications.
  • LibreOffice started the development of its rendering engine optimized for internet usage in 2011 and was on the lookout for a practical application, with the goal to provide the same quality of working with documents as on the desktop, but using just a web browser.
  • IceWarp with its enterprise solutions background and over 14 years of expertise will help LibreOffice to accelerate the development towards a real product which can be reused by the open source community in a wide range of deployment scenarios.
  • By creating a free alternative that any provider can implement without restrictions, the companies aim to restore fair competition to a market dominated by monopoly suppliers, to drive innovation, compatibility and interoperability through open formats, across all platforms and for everybody.

The lightweight document management features already built in the collaboration and messaging solution IceWarp Server allow users to store, manage and preview Office documents in the web browser, without having any office suite installed on their computers. To edit the documents, IceWarp provides a seamless connection between its web-based storage and productivity applications installed on user’s computer. The growing popularity of these features lead IceWarp developers to consider how best to do without an Office suite completely, and move it into the browser.

While there are several cloud-based solutions that can edit native Office formats with various degree of compatibility, none of them provides the same core values and format compatibility as LibreOffice, now being used by over 80 million active users around the world. Another challenge is that the online collaboration market is under a tight vendor lock-in, and all existing commercial API offerings are merely a window into a provider-owned cloud service. LibreOffice on the other hand, in its mission to eliminate digital divides and promote global electronic free speech, has already set to work on bringing the free Office suite into a web browser as early as 2011, but hasn’t materialized the technology into a product that everyone can use.

IceWarp and Collabora will work alongside over a thousand existing LibreOffice contributors to implement the whole online editing portion of the software, including the server-side provided by LibreOffice, and the client front-end based on HTML5 technology. The result will be a fully mature server solution, which any other provider, individual or project in the community can utilize for their applications and services. This will jump start document integration across services where it wasn’t possible before, bringing a whole new way of interactivity to how everyone works in the cloud.

Quotes

“It is wonderful to marry IceWarp’s vision and investment with our passion and skills for LibreOffice development. It is always satisfying to work on something that, as a company, we have a need for ourselves. I’m looking forward to using this myself, as well as our work together as a team.” — Michael Meeks, Vice President, Collabora Productivity Ltd

“Creating alternatives is in our DNA. In the same way customers were looking for Exchange alternatives and made IceWarp what it is today, they will be seeking Google Apps alternatives and we will be ready.” — Adam Paclt, IceWarp CEO

“LibreOffice Online will extend the availability of LibreOffice to the cloud, adding collaboration features which have been asked for by many users. In the future, a LibreOffice user will be able to seamlessly switch from the desktop to mobile and to the cloud without leaving his free software environment of choice.” — Thorsten Behrens, Chairman of The Document Foundation

Resources

  1. IceWarp Server
  2. LibreOffice
  3. LibreOffice Next Decade Manifesto
  4. Infographic
About IceWarp
IceWarp is a leading provider of comprehensive messaging solutions for every business class, size and niche. Building upon a decade of enterprise e-mail platforms experience, IceWarp offers organizations an all-in-one messaging and collaboration solution that enables their workforce to communicate through any platform, be it e-mail, mobile synchronization, chat, SMS, voice or video. The highly scalable system is used by organizations of all sizes, from SMBs to large corporations like Marriott International, Verizon Communications, Inmarsat and Toyota.
About Collabora Productivity
Collabora Productivity delivers LibreOffice products and consulting. With the largest team of certified LibreOffice engineers, it is a leading contributor to the LibreOffice code base and community. LibreOffice-from-Collabora provides a business-hardened office suite with long term multi-platform support. Collabora Productivity is a division of Collabora Ltd., the global software consultancy specializing in providing the benefits of Open Source to the commercial world, specialising in automotive, semiconductors, digital TV and consumer electronics industries.
About The Document Foundation (TDF)
The Document Foundation is an independent, self-governing and meritocratic organization, based on Free Software ethos and incorporated in Germany as a not for profit entity. TDF is focused on the development of LibreOffice – the best free office suite ever – chosen by the global community as the legitimate heir of OOo, and as such adopted by a growing number of public administrations, enterprises and SMBs for desktop productivity. TDF is accessible to individuals and organizations who agree with its core values and contribute to its activities. At the end of January 2014, the foundation has over 190 members and over 3,000 volunteer contributors worldwide.

LibreOffice 4.5 to provide PDF signing and timestamping

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Collabora Productivity has completed integration of trusted timestamping and digital signing into LibreOffice. Used extensively by governments and information security companies, these features make LibreOffice the first comprehensive Open Source PDF signing solution. The work was commissioned by Swiss non-profit Wilhelm Tux after a successful crowdfunding campaign in October.

Trusted timestamping will be released in upcoming LibreOffice 4.5. It securely tracks the creation and modification of documents — once a document has been timestamped, it is impossible to compromise or dispute its integrity. Certificate signing of PDFs, which Collabora recently published in LibreOffice 4.4, guarantees a document’s origin and authenticity. Combined, these new features enable LibreOffice to generate documents suitable for a wide variety of secure and legal settings.

“The addition of signatures and timestamps to LibreOffice makes LibreOffice the obvious for a range of buyers” says Michael Meeks, Vice President at Collabora Productivity. “These enterprise features are the latest to cater to professional users, and reflect the demanding environments to which LibreOffice is being deployed”.

The signatures that are produced are interoperable with all PDF readers supporting the PDF/A standard, including products from Adobe. The signing process makes use of certificates and cryptography native to the operating system used, with Windows versions of LibreOffice using Microsoft’s included certificate manager. Mac and Linux versions include the NSS cryptographic library shared by Mozilla Firefox. Industry standard x.509 certificates are used for signing documents, and can be obtained from a wide range of certificate authorities.

Trusted timestamping implements IETF standard RFC 3161, and requires validation from a Time Stamping Authority (TSA). Several TSA’s provide the service free of charge, while Open Source TSA server applications may be deployed and operated independently.

“The use of PDF signatures and timestamps is required by Swiss law in many regulations concerning the exchange of documents with Government bodies, including the EÖBV for notary documents, and ElDI-V for tax receipts” said Markus Wernig, Chairman of Wilhelm Tux. “I’m pleased and amazed that Collabora have achieved the features in such a short time”.

About Collabora Productivity:
Collabora Productivity delivers LibreOffice products and consulting. With the largest team of certified LibreOffice engineers, it is a leading contributor to the LibreOffice code base and community. LibreOffice-from-Collabora provides a business-hardened office suite with long term multi-platform support. Collabora Productivity is a division of Collabora Ltd., the global software consultancy specializing in providing the benefits of Open Source to the commercial world, specialising in automotive, semiconductors, digital TV and consumer electronics industries.
About Wilhelm Tux:
Wilhelm Tux is a Swiss non-profit, non-government organisation founded in 2002. It’s focus is advocating Free and Open Source Software, the use of Open Standards in the public sector, and on protection of digital civil liberties. The group and it’s partners work to establish a favourable environment for the adoption of Free Software in Switzerland. In the past Wilhelm Tux served as a member of the constituting committee of the Swiss standardization body eCH, and has since taken an active role in public debate on digital issues within the public sector.

Collabora Productivity awarded Best UK Open Source Organisation

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UKOpenSourceAward2015

Collabora Productivity has been named Best Organisation at the UK Open Source Awards 2015. The award, presented By Software Freedom Conservancy Executive Director Karen Sandler on Wednesday in Edinburgh, was made for ground-breaking work on LibreOffice in 2014.

“This is a time of unprecedented change for British Open Source companies, and growth that’s long overdue” said Collabora Vice President Michael Meeks in his acceptance speech. “The productivity space in particular is due for a shake up, and Open Source will provide it”.

Collabora was chosen over three other shortlisted entrants. These included IMS MAXIMS, a comprehensive Electronic Health Record system used extensively by the NHS, and non-profit Open Source startup Matrix, a recent competitor to Google’s WebRTC. Organisers announced a record number of candidates this year, with a 40% increase on 2014.

“Recent Government policy changes are stimulating demand for Open Source services and development” said Greg Soper, Event Manager of the Open Source Awards. “Global trends towards service-based business models, combined with increasing pressure for value returns, are providing unparalleled opportunities for Britain’s Open Source businesses”.

Via its flagship product, LibreOffice-From-Collabora, the company last year extended LibreOffice support for Microsoft OOXML format, bringing crucial interoperability improvements; added support for legally valid digital signatures to PDF documents, and introduced OpenCL computation, resulting in hardware acceleration and a major performance boost on modern devices. Engineers also did extensive work on LibreOffice for Android, releasing the first in a series of products, LibreOffice Viewer for Android, early this year.

About Collabora Productivity:
Collabora Productivity delivers LibreOffice products and consulting to the enterprise. With the largest team of certified LibreOffice engineers, it is a leading contributor to the LibreOffice code base and community. LibreOffice-from-Collabora provides a business-hardened office suite with long term multi-platform support. Collabora Productivity is a division of Collabora Ltd., the global software consultancy specializing in providing the benefits of Open Source to the commercial world, specialising in mobile, automotive and consumer electronics industries, counting Samsung, Intel, and Google among its former clients.