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At the heart of the Kolab design principle is the reuse of proven components in order to deliver core functionality, whilst building upon these to drive value to our users. From the server through to the Kolab smart client, the entire Kolab experience is driven by some of the most trusted and highest quality technologies available today. The combined experience of thousands of engineers has ensured that the core functionality of Kolab is stable, secure, flexible and scalable and allows Kolab Systems to innovate freely for our users.

By reusing proven technologies and tying them together in lightweight manner, Kolab Systems can integrate existing, best-of-breed components into Kolab allowing the freedom to innovate in other areas. The result of this is a solution which is easy to deploy, maintain and extend. Typical extensions to a Kolab deployment might include adding Mailman for mailing lists, Openfire for XMPP support or Bacula for backup with object-level granularity. The modularity of the server also makes it easy for those not using the Kolab smart phone client to achieve syncing through connectors such as Funambol with Syncphony. Standard components of the Kolab Groupware Solution include:

OpenLDAP
http://www.openldap.org
“OpenLDAP Software is a free, open source implementation of the Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) developed by the OpenLDAP Project. It is released under its own BSD-style license called the OpenLDAP Public License[1]. LDAP is a platform-independent protocol. Several common Linux distributions include OpenLDAP Software for LDAP support. [Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenLDAP]”

Cyrus
http://cyrusimap.web.cmu.edu
“The Cyrus IMAP (Internet Message Access Protocol) server provides access to personal mail and system-wide bulletin boards through the IMAP protocol. The Cyrus IMAP server is a scalable enterprise mail system designed for use from small to large enterprise environments using standards-based technologies.

A full Cyrus IMAP implementation allows a seamless mail and bulletin board environment to be set up across multiple servers. It differs from other IMAP server implementations in that it is run on "sealed" servers, where users are not normally permitted to log in. The mailbox database is stored in parts of the filesystem that are private to the Cyrus IMAP system. All user access to mail is through software using the IMAP, POP3, or KPOP protocols. [Source: http://cyrusimap.web.cmu.edu]”

Postfix
http://www.postfix.org
“Postfix, a free and open-source mail transfer agent (MTA), routes and delivers electronic mail. It is intended as a fast, easier-to-administer, and secure alternative to the widely-used Sendmail MTA. It is released under the IBM Public License 1.0 which is a free software licence.

Originally written by Wietse Venema during a stay at the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center, first released in mid-1999 and formerly known as VMailer and as IBM Secure Mailer. [Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postfix_(software)]”

GnuPG
http://www.gnupg.org
“GnuPG is the GNU project's complete and free implementation of the OpenPGP standard as defined by RFC4880 . GnuPG allows to encrypt and sign your data and communication, features a versatile key managment system as well as access modules for all kind of public key directories. GnuPG, also known as GPG, is a command line tool with features for easy integration with other applications. A wealth of frontend applications and libraries are available. Version 2 of GnuPG also provides support for S/MIME. [Source: http://www.gnupg.org]”

KDE/Kontact
http://userbase.kde.org/Kontact
“Kontact suite unites mature and proven KDE PIM applications under one roof. Thanks to the powerful KPart technology, existing applications are seamlessly integrated into one.

The components of KDE Kontact are tailored to work well with each other. This results in features like intuitive drag-and-drop between appointment handling, task lists and contacts. [Source: http://userbase.kde.org/Kontact]”