The Kolab concept is substantially different from other groupware server solutions in that it puts a lot of the functionality into very feature rich clients (Kontact on KDE, the Toltec Outlook connector on Windows and Horde as a web interface, for example), instead of tasking the server with most of the work involved with managing groupware data. The server acts primarily as a storage provider which is synced with clients via the IMAP protocol. Communication between clients happens through email. This, along with mechanisms such as LDAP replication, allows for excellent scalability and robustness. The use of IMAP synchronisation as a means of exchanging the groupware data between clients and server and the rich client concept allow for advanced offline capabilities. The clients are functional even without access to a server.

This talk will contrast the ideas and technologies employed in the Kolab concept and its clients (primarily the KDE client) with those used in other solutions. It will especially focus on the use of email technologies such as disconnected IMAP, MIME, Sieve, SMTP etc. for building a highly flexible, scalable and interoperable groupware system.

Till Adam is one of the core developers of the KDE desktop's mail and personal information management applications and libraries (KMail, KOrganizer, Kontact, etc http://www.kde.org, http://pim.kde.org).

As a software developer for Klarälvdalens Datakonsult AB, Sweden, he is part of the team which implemented the Linux client support for the Kolab (http://www.kolab.org) project based on the KDE PIM components. He's given talks on KMail and KDE PIM at various conferences and presented them at trade shows.