We seem to be mentioning both Parallels and Kerio pretty frequently, and they keep coming up with cool stuff. Kerio announced today that it will be offering its mail and collaboration platform, Kerio Mailserver, as a Virtual Appliance for Parallels on the Mac, news that will be of interest to a lot of folks looking for an even easier way to get away from Exchange.

The Virtual Appliance comes with a preconfigured version of CentOS 5.3 Linux, optimized for Kerio Mailserver. It looks like an ideal solution for businesses that need to run more than one OS, allowing hardware to be shared and making efficient use of server power.

I'm guessing you'd want an XServe or high-end Mac Pro if you're planning to deploy multiple Virtual Appliances, but I would think that the KMS Virtual Appliance should run on any Intel Mac which can do a decent job of running Parallels to begin with. If you missed it, check out the WWDC video of a tricked-out Mac Pro running Leopard and two installs of Vista with Parallels.

The Kerio Mailserver Virtual Appliance comes ready-to-run (if you have Parallels Desktop or Server) as a 30-day trial. Pricing starts at $499US for ten users, with an option to add integrated McAfee Anti-Virus for an extra $100US ($599).

Yesterday, amidst the SlingMobile débâcle and an OS update, Kerio Technologies released Kerio Mail MailServer 6.7. The mail and collaboration server, often used as a replacement for Exchange, has added several new features, including a few geared toward Mac users.

The Kerio Global Address List (GAL) is a new feature that provides a simple way to get address and contact info from clients like Outlook or Entourage. It syncs and authenticates with both Microsoft Active Directory and Apple Open Directory, as well as Kerio's own user directory. In any company, people join and leave the group, and users are often required to manually update their address books to add and remove entries. With GAL, it's a single directory in a single place, and changes are transparent for users. It supports Entourage, works with the iPhone and functions offline.

Kerio MailServer 6.7 also comes with an auto-configuration script for Entourage 2008, downloadable within the Kerio client, providing pre-configured account setup. There's support for private events in iCal, allowing users to maintain personal schedules without requiring a separate calendar application. AddressBook gets some additional love with support for synchronizing groups (which become Categories in Entourage).

Kerio has had good support for iPhone users for a while now. For non-iPhone mobile users, there's new support for viewing HTML emails on Nokia devices, as well as DataViz RoadSync compatibility.

The MailServer itself is now a certified VMWare appliance, and promotes compatibility with two new Linux distributions: Ubuntu 8 and Debian 5. CentOS is the preferred platform for running on VMWare. IT admins and users alike will appreciate the dramatically improved anti-spam engine, which has been optimized for multi-CPU use, parallel processing of email messages for large queues, improved heuristics and 13 layers of spam protection.

In addition to some of the previously available migration tools provided by Kerio, a new IMAP migration tool relieves what is undoubtedly one of the biggest headaches in switching mail servers: keeping your old mail. It's a cross-platform utility which moves messages, folders, accounts and domains from the old system to Kerio MailServer. The IMAP migration tool has been fully tested with OS X.

Kerio's pricing has remained the same with this release. Starting at $499 for 10 users, there's a range of options available for different configurations and add-ons, as well as subscription pricing. See Kerio's pricing page for more details.

Kerio has released version 6.6 of Kerio MailServer, another push forward in their campaign to take a bite out of the Microsoft Exchange market. We mentioned the ActiveSync capabilities of Kerio MailServer in July, and have noted the expanding capabilities of the 6.x releases as an increasingly viable alternative to Exchange. Version 6.6 encompasses a variety of improvements, including expanded features for mobile and iPhone users. Two items which stand out prominently are the addition of resource scheduling and the Exchange Migration Tool.

Resource scheduling allows shared company resources -- anything from conference rooms and projectors to company cars -- to be scheduled and reserved using MailServer's shared calendars. Access controls can be specified by administrators for each resource, and a "Reservation Manager" can be assigned with add/edit/delete priveleges. Mac users can access the resource schedules through Entourage or iCal (although Kerio is less thrilled with the inelegance of the iCal solution and its LDAP dependencies). PC users have access through Outlook, and everyone can schedule resources through Kerio Webmail, which is fully compatible with Safari, Firefox and Internet Explorer.

The Kerio Exchange Migration Tool is provided free of charge to Kerio 6.6 users, and is designed to take a lot of the fear out of making a transition from Exchange to Kerio. It runs on a Windows box (works fine with virtualization) between the Exchange and Kerio servers and, in about 4 clicks, transfers all of the existing Exchange data, users, etc. to Kerio MailServer.

Additional features in 6.6 include improved iPhone support (with HTML email and attachment viewing), and an iCal auto-configuration script which is generated by the server for each Mac user. The auto-configuration sets up CalDAV and LDAP to work with Kerio, handling all of the details without requiring the user to know anything more than their own machine's administrative password and their Kerio MailServer login information.

The new version maintains the same prices, starting at $499 for 10 users ($599 with McAfee Anti-Virus) and add-on packages for additional users starting at $120 (+5 users). Current users with a subscription can, as far as I can tell, upgrade for free.

We've mentioned Kerio MailServer before, pointing it out as an Exchange alternative. Well, just two days after the release of the 3G iPhone, Kerio announced version 6.5.2 with full iPhone compatibility, complete with push email, contacts and calendar thanks to ActiveSync.

Kerio MailServer has technically supported the iPhone for about a year, using a sync agent that was only capable of synchronization through IMAP, and calendar and contact syncing was handled through iTunes. With newly available technologies, MailServer users have a much more efficient means of keeping everything flowing. It's also been pointed out that, unlike some other email servers, it allows full access to all of your folders, not just the Inbox. According to Kerio, it's real "push," and it really works.

I'm not currently running Kerio MailServer, so I can't attest to its effectiveness, but the 3G update is free for currently active subscribers. Using it on a previous generation iPhone, however, does require a paid upgrade*. Check Kerio's site for more information on pricing and features.

*Correction: it's a flat out free upgrade for all current subscribers.

Kerio Technologies announced version 6.5 of the Kerio MailServer -- 2 years in the making -- yesterday. We talked about version 6 recently, but this is their largest update yet and clearly shows their readiness to take a bite out of the Microsoft Exchange market. With version 6.5, Kerio is providing the groupware platform and tools needed to completely replace Exchange within a collaboration-centric organization.

The release is compatible with both server and workstation flavors of OS X with full support for Leopard, in addition to being fully Microsoft certified for Vista and Redhat certified for Linux compatibility. 6.5 also includes enhanced support for Entourage 2008, making full use of message flags and "out of office" messages which are synced on both mobile and workstation clients.

The biggest change of interest to Mac users is the addition of CalDAV support. Kerio users can look up information, share and subscribe to calendars and achieve 2-way sync whether they're on a Mac, an iPhone, a Palm or Windows Mobile handheld, a PC ... you get the idea. The server can provide a bridge between open and proprietary standards, making sure that you see the same data everywhere and allowing for smooth cross-platform interoperability.

The other major improvement, definitely of interest to users in multi-platform environments, is an upgrade to the Outlook Connector with a complete rewrite of its underlying database structure. It allows for easy data access, online and offline, with current and older versions of Outlook. And its full-text search capabilities search across messages, contacts and calendar events with support for Google Desktop search.

Not surprisingly, a release this big resulted in a pricing change. The standard package (10 users) now starts at $499 and adding additional users costs $20 per user. A version with integrated McAfee Anti-Virus for bi-directional scanning of all email starts at $599 and additional users are $24 each. Both versions include anti-spam, user management with authentication against Active Directory and Open Directory. Visit Kerio for more information.

Update: The US Apple Store is now carrying a base server (10 user) license and install media for Kerio MailServer with McAfee.

When I posted about the Zimbra collaboration suite a little while ago, it was noted in the comments that, while the Zimbra client is now working in Safari 3, the server isn't yet Leopard-compatible. Kerio MailServer offers a Safari 3 and Leopard-compatible alternative with a lot of groupware functionality.

Kerio's Safari 3 compatibility stems mostly from the fact that it doesn't have a rich text editor in the client, but it works flawlessly for plain text email and the interface is as smooth and AJAXy as Zimbra's. Kerio has had a Mac version of the server since 2003, with drop-in Exchange replacement capability and the ability to sync contacts, calendars and email without the need for an external client. Kerio has even had iPhone sync since last Fall.

Kerio's pricing structure is slightly different from Zimbra's, but competitive; there's no open source Kerio version, as there is with Zimbra. But if you're in the market for a Leopard-based mail server and collaboration solution, Kerio seems to be a pretty good choice.