Gordano on Tuesday will announce version 11 of its Gordano Messaging Suite, which the British company continues to position as an alternative to the Microsoft Exchange e-mail server.
With that in mind, Gordano Ltd. is introducing shared calendaring, contacts, notes and tasks with a new product called GMS Web Organizer, the successor to the GMS Calendaring application.
GMS Web Organizer uses a rich HTTP client interface on the desktop, giving users a view into their information store thats identical to what theyd get with the Microsoft Outlook client.
Outlook users will be able to use Web Organizer with no retraining required, Gordano officials said, adding that Outlook remains the most popular client for Gordano customers.
“You pick the client and it just works,” said Gordano director John Stanners.
Web Organizer also supports access from iCal-aware clients such as Mozilla Calendar and Apple iCal.
Another new feature in this release is version 4 of the GMS Instant Messenger product, which provides a native Windows desktop client. Again Gordano is reaching out to Outlook users, by supporting presence and location information in Outlook in the new IM client, while also allowing users to send instant messages, SMS (Short Message Service) messages and pager messages directly from within the mail client, Gordano officials said.
Gordano Messaging Suite 11 runs on Windows NT, XP, 2000 and 2003; Linux (Red Hat, SuSE, Mandrake, Debian, etc); Solaris; and AIX. The product will be available Thursday.
Gordano has about 20,000 customers and 50 million installed seats in 198 countries, company officials said. Based in North Somerset, England, the company has its North American headquarters in New York. About half of its customer base is in North America.