Instant messaging (IM) technology is a type of online chat allowing real-time text transmission over the Internet or another computer network. Messages are typically transmitted between two or more parties, when each user inputs text and triggers a transmission to the recipient(s), who are all connected on a common network. It differs from email in that conversations over instant messaging happen in real-time. Most modern IM applications use push technology and also add other features such as emojis, file transfer, chatbots, voice over IP, or video chat capabilities.
Microsoft Outlook is a personal information manager software system from Microsoft, available as a part of the Microsoft Office and Microsoft 365 software suites. Though primarily an email client, Outlook also includes such functions as calendaring, task managing, contact managing, note-taking, journal logging and web browsing. And has also become a popular email client for many businesses.
SOGo is an open source collaborative software (groupware) server with a focus on simplicity and scalability.
HCL Sametime Premium is a client–server application and middleware platform that provides real-time, unified communications and collaboration for enterprises. Those capabilities include presence information, enterprise instant messaging, web conferencing, community collaboration, and telephony capabilities and integration. Currently it is developed and sold by HCL Software, a division of Indian company HCL Technologies, until 2019 by the Lotus Software division of IBM.
Calendaring Extensions to WebDAV, or CalDAV, is an Internet standard allowing a client to access and manage calendar data along with the ability to schedule meetings with users on the same or on remote servers. It lets multiple users in different locations to share, search and synchronize calendar data. It extends the WebDAV specification and uses the iCalendar format for the calendar data. The access protocol is defined by RFC 4791. Extensions to CalDAV for scheduling are standardized as RFC 6638. The protocol is used by many important open-source applications.
Zimbra Collaboration, formerly known as the Zimbra Collaboration Suite (ZCS) before 2019, is a collaborative software suite that includes an email server and a web client.
Push email is an email system that provides an always-on capability, in which new email is actively transferred (pushed) as it arrives by the mail delivery agent (MDA) to the mail user agent (MUA), also called the email client. Email clients include smartphones and, less strictly, IMAP personal computer mail applications.
Oracle Fusion Middleware consists of several software products from Oracle Corporation. FMW spans multiple services, including Java EE and developer tools, integration services, business intelligence, collaboration, and content management. FMW depends on open standards such as BPEL, SOAP, XML and JMS.
Bynari is a defunct company based in Dallas, developing server and email software, mainly known for its Insight Family, similar to Microsoft Exchange Server with Outlook.
Sun Java System Communications Suite is a collection of "Industrial-Strength" software services from Sun Microsystems. The supported platforms are: Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Solaris and Windows Server. Since Oracle acquired Sun in 2010, collection is now called Oracle Communications Unified Communications Suite.
Oracle WebCenter is Oracle's portfolio of user engagement software products built on top of the JSF-based Oracle Application Development Framework. There are three main products that make up the WebCenter portfolio, and they can be purchased together as a suite or individually:
O3Spaces is a document management system developed by O3Spaces B.V.. It is built by a team of software engineers based in the Netherlands using OpenOffice.org, StarOffice, and ODF-centric applications as enterprise office and collaboration solutions. The product is written in Java, and based on the Tomcat server with a PostgreSQL backend. O3Spaces works by providing users a single web-based team environment, with built-in search capabilities and an optional Desktop Assistant. Its search functionality is said to work across PDF, ODF, and Microsoft Office document formats. Currently Firefox, Internet Explorer and Safari are supported.
Ipswitch IMail Server is an email server application with groupware functionality that runs on Microsoft Windows OS. It was developed in 1994 by Ipswitch, Inc., a software company based in Lexington, Massachusetts.
Exchange ActiveSync is a proprietary protocol designed for the synchronization of email, contacts, calendar, tasks, and notes from a messaging server to a smartphone or other mobile devices. The protocol also provides mobile device management and policy controls. The protocol is based on XML. The mobile device communicates over HTTP or HTTPS.
GroupWise is a messaging and collaboration platform from Micro Focus that supports email, calendaring, personal information management, instant messaging, and document management. The GroupWise platform consists of desktop client software, which is available for Windows,, and the server software, which is supported on Windows Server and Linux.
eM Client is a Windows and macOS based email client for sending and receiving emails, managing calendars, tasks, contacts, and notes. Live chat is integrated as well. It was developed as a user-friendly alternative to existing email clients and calendar solutions.
Mailfence is an encrypted email service that offers OpenPGP based end-to-end encryption and digital signatures. It was launched in November 2013 by ContactOffice Group, which has been operating an online collaboration suite for universities and other organizations since 1999.
Kopano is an open-source groupware application suite originally based on Zarafa. The initial version of Kopano Core (KC) was forked from the then-current release of Zarafa Collaboration Platform, and superseded ZCP in terms of lineage as ZCP switched to maintenance mode with patches flowing from KC. Kopano WebApp similarly descended from Zarafa WebApp. Since October 2017, Kopano Core is also known more specifically as Kopano Groupware Core, since Kopano B.V. developed more products that were not directly requiring groupware components.
The JSON Meta Application Protocol (JMAP) is a set of related open Internet Standard protocols for handling email. JMAP is implemented using JSON APIs over HTTP and has been developed as an alternative to IMAP/SMTP and proprietary email APIs such as Gmail and Outlook. Additional protocols and data models being built on top of the core of JMAP for handling contacts and calendar synchronization are meant to be potential replacements for CardDAV and CalDAV, and other support is currently in the works.
