Assured: The Isode Blog

More on the POP to IMAP Gateway

Since we announced a new evaluation guide on providing IMAP access to POP email accounts, by configuring our M-Box POP/IMAP server to act as a gateway, we've had a considerable surge in evaluation requests.

The gateway function of M-Box has been one that has been part of the product since its launch and, despite placing a product page explaining this feature on our website, we have perhaps been a little guilty in not promoting this feature as much as it deserves.

The possibility of providing IMAP email access to POP accounts, or even LEMONADE compliant IMAP email access to non-LEMONADE IMAP accounts is clearly one that is proving to be popular.

Of particular interest to new evaluators has been the provision of 'push' email services (based on the IMAP-IDLE protocol) to users, and we've set up in-house test system that demonstrates this ability with a wide range of back-end systems, including IBM Lotus Domino and Microsoft Exchange.

In the near future we'll be setting up an external server that will allow evaluators to quickly test out the system in a live environment without having to install or configure the system themselves. More on this shortly.

In the meantime we're continuing to explore provision of IMAP and 'push' email to other popular non-IMAP services, including webmail systems like Google's Gmail.

Web interfaces to the Directory, a new Isode whitepaper

A new whitepaper just released on the Isode website, looks at Isode's web-based interfaces to the directory and introduces two new tools that will be released as part of R14, a personal information administrator and a directory browser.

Both are currently packaged as part of the Internet Messaging Administrator but which will change over time to become general purpose directory UIs.

The whitepaper can be found at: http://www.isode.com/whitepapers/web-interfaces.html

IMAP access to POP email accounts

We've released a new evaluation guide today showing how to configure our M-Box server to act as a POP/IMAP gateway (more).

Using M-Box in gateway mode enables email service providers (administering an ISP or company email system for example) to give IMAP access to POP-only email accounts.

As M-Box is fully compliant with the LEMONADE Profile 1 IMAP extensions, end-users will also gain access to LEMONADE features such as IMAP-IDLE (the 'push' email protocol supported by many existing IMAP clients).

We've written whitepapers previously on why IMAP email access is important, especially for mobile devices and workers who need to access mail from multiple locations, and we can envisage a number of different deployment scenarios for this product including companies wanting straightforward IMAP access to POP email accounts, those already offering POP & IMAP access but who want to add LEMONADE functionality to their existing IMAP offering and those wishing to offer IMAP access to popular webmail systems that provide POP but not IMAP access.