Mailservers and Groupware Solutions under your control

Email, calendar and contacts are basic functions that should continue to be available in a user-friendly and reliable manner.

Open source and open standards

There’s no need to be locked into a single vendor for email, group calendars, and enterprise-wide contact management. The standards IMAP (for mailboxes), CardDAV (contacts / vCards), CalDAV (calendars, tasks) and S/MIME (encryption) are sophisticated and well supported across the board. They can also be used reliably on mobile phones.

We have set ourselves the goal of creating standards-compliant, open-source-based groupware solutions for you - secure, flexible, modular and cost-efficient.

While other communication tools such as chats and video conferences may take centre stage in your internal communication, email remains a relevant channel for customer communication due to its direct, documented and universal nature.

Let’s talk about your environment

Modular approach

We use stable tried-and-tested individual components for each task. This allows us to respond to individual requests or improve developments in the future. You can find a selection of our preferred components below.

Server components

• IMAP-Server / mailbox storage: Dovecot
• CalDAV and CardDAV for managing contacts and calendars: Sabre/dav, DAViCal or Radicale
• Mail Transfer Agent (MTA) / SMTP: Postfix
• Spam and malware filtering, SMTP-Relaying: Hornet Security as SaaS

Client components

• iPhone: the standard iOS apps provided by Apple
• Android: the standard mail, calendar and contacts app provided by the respective phone manufacturer (supplemented by DAVx⁵ as account provider). If a uniform mobile e-mail client is to be used, we recommend K-9 Mail¹ .
• Windows: Mozilla Thunderbird
• Linux: Mozilla Thunderbird, GNOME Evolution
• Webmail: Roundcube

What we don’t (won’t) offer

No complete solutions such as Kopano or Zimbra

We do not implement complete groupware solutions like Kopano, Horde or Zimbra. In our opinion, these products lack modularity and flexibility.

Due to the lack of influence on single components, one has to live with partial weaknesses ² in the overall solution, especially if these weaknesses have arisen historically or because compatibility with Microsoft Exchange is desired. ^{3 4} We consider them unsuitable, even if they are often available as open source or use the server components mentioned above, which are also used by foundata.

No Microsoft 365 / Exchange Online

We do not migrate to Microsoft 365. SaaS cloud solution does not deliver the best outcomes for our customers. The incompatibility of Exchange and Outlook with all other relevant clients and solutions places you at a high level of dependency, which could actually be avoided. This is further reinforced by Exchange Online and dovetailing with other Microsoft services.

The use of Microsoft 365 in companies where professional data protection is involved can also generate enormous effort and thus costs. Recording processing activities and legal bases, as well as the data protection impact assessment required in many environments prior to introduction, become very time-consuming. Furthermore, the legal basis for data transmission remains unresolved.

M365 Cloud Exit

As it so happens we do offer support for “M365 cloud exit”. If your company is considering this step our experts are here to help you migrate away from Microsoft 365 and build a customized, cost-effective and secure on-premise solution in its stead.

Exchange and Outlook with limitations

foundata relies on the strengths of open source, open standards and interoperability. Microsoft Exchange as well as Outlook generally break with these concepts and values.

Nevertheless, we are realists. Many companies have already invested in established technologies like Microsoft Exchange and Outlook or are tied to them because of other dependencies or industry software. This is why we continue to support these systems in existing environments. Our team has extensive and long-standing experience with Outlook⁴ and Exchange administration and customer environments in active support.

It should also be noted that Microsoft is making the operation of Exchange on-premises (i.e. hosted at your company) increasingly unattractive, especially with regard to licensing types and costs.⁵ Microsoft 365 and Exchange Online are clearly the strategic focus of Microsoft.