Ignacio Correas, CEO of eBox Technologies, will give a talk at the LinuxTag, Europe’s leading Open Source Event, that will be held in Berlin (Germany) from the 9th until the 12th of June 2010. The talk entitled “Disrupting the market of SMB servers” will take place on the 9th of June, within the Business track of the conference program.

During the talk Correas will explain why the small business server market, currently dominated by Microsoft’s Windows Small Business Server, fulfills all the conditions for the entrance of a new disruptive technology and why Linux combined with open souce network management tools form the foundations of this disruption. Furthermore, SMB server needs and expectations are discussed and the talk is completed with a more practical approach, presenting eBox Platform, the Linux small business server, as a means of taking Linux to the small and medium businesses.

“Open source is one of the most disruptive forces in the software industry and, with the right approach, it can completely reshape almost any market” said Ignacio Correas. “In my talk I will try to explain the approach we have taken with eBox, combining an open source product with a SaaS offering in order to make the most of its disruptive potential for the SMB server market. Moreover, I do believe the rationale I use can be easily adapted to other markets and open source projects”.

The vocational education program “eBox Academy” was presented today by Ignacio Correas, CEO of eBox Technologies and Ignacio Sancho, Head of Studies at the Integrated Studies Center Los Enlaces. eBox Academy aims at offering eBox Platform as a learning resource to the vocational education students of Information and Communication Technologies, allowing the students to complete their training through an innovative and educational tool with great potential in the field of Linux based system administration.

The Autonomous Community of Aragon (Spain) will pioneer the implementation of the eBox Academy program that will subsequently expand to other regions in Spain and other countries. As Ignacio Correas specified during the presentation “We will start delivering certified training through eBox Academy in vocational training centers located in Aragon and Catalonia during the course 2010-2011 and in the course 2011-2012 we expect to be present in several autonomous communities in Spain and some of those countries with most interest in eBox Platform, such as the United States, Germany and several Latin American regions.”

If you are interested in the details, check out the full press releases (available both in English and in Spanish).

Jorge Salamero, eBox Platform developer and analyst at eBox Technologies, will give a three-hour workshop “Configuring eBox Platform as an Office Server with LDAP and Samba” on the 15th of April, at the Centro de Novas Tecnoloxías de Galicia (CNTG), in Santiago de Compostela (Spain). The workshop is organized by the CNTG and eBox Technologies and it is mainly aimed at professionals working in both private and public sectors in technical support or as system administrators.

The workshop consists of a brief introduction to the Linux small business server eBox Platform, installation process and configuration of eBox Platform as an Office Server. The audience will be guided step by step on how to set up the network and firewall configuration for an Office scenario and how the centralized users and groups management can work standalone, on master-slave mode or synchronizing with an existing Windows Active Directory server.

Furthermore, the attendees are shown how to configure a Samba server with eBox Platform. Samba is the Linux implementation of Windows shared files and printers that can be integrated with a Windows Domain as a Primary Domain Controller (PDC) or as a domain member. Usually configuring Samba is not a trivial task, but with eBox you can set up a server within minutes allowing easy configuration, not only shared files and printers, but also advanced features like PDC, domain policies, roaming profiles, antivirus or recycle bin. To finish, the attendees will be shown how to monitor their eBox servers and generate events that alert the system administrators when something requires their attention.

The workshop is free of charge and it will be held in Spanish on the 15th of April from 4.30 to 7.45 p.m. at the Centro de Novas Tecnoloxías de Galicia, Santiago de Compostela (Spain). To participate in the workshop, all you have to do is to register at the CNTG web site – The online registration will close on the 14th of April or when full capacity has been reached.

eBox Platform development team is glad to announce that the Development Roadmap for the Linux small business server eBox Platform 2.0 has now been published. eBox Platform 2.0 is a major release that will run on the next Ubuntu LTS version (Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx) and it will be published in July 2010.

Besides the transition to Ubuntu 10.04, eBox Platform 2.0 will ship new features such as easy disaster recovery or autoconfiguration wizards, improvements in the software management, proxy, firewall and mail services and a number of usability enhancements and other minor improvements. You can find the detailed Roadmap at the trac.

Any feedback on the Roadmap is welcome through the Official eBox Forum.

eBox Platform Development Teams is glad to announce that Virtual Machine images of eBox Platform, the Linux small business server, are now available. The disk images for VirtualBox and VMware now allow to create a Virtual Machine and start testing eBox in a few seconds, skipping the installation process and saving a lot of time. This option is especially useful for those new and previous eBox users who want to have a quick look to the latest eBox Platform functionality!

The VM images together with instructions and additional information are available at: http://trac.ebox-platform.com/wiki/Download/VMImages Please note that the images come with a reduced set of eBox packages and actually eBox offers plenty of more features that are available at the “Software Management” section once you have created your VM.

As always, any feedback or suggestion is very welcome through the Forum.

We are glad to announce that the Centro de Tecnologías Avanzadas (CTA) will deliver two certified eBox Platform courses in March 2010 in Zaragoza, Spain. The courses, entitled “Administración de sistemas con Ubuntu – Aplicación eBox”, are aimed at employees, unemployed and freelancers interested in Linux based network management.

The courses are free of charge and will be held in Spanish, from the 8th until the 26th of March – one in the morning with a total duration of 60 hours and one in the afternoon with a total duration of 48 hours. Both of the courses also include a certification exam. All the interested parties can apply on-line until the 26th of February (please note that there are different applications for the morning course and the afternoon course).

These courses are aimed at IT professionals with basic knowledge on computer network management, for example, Windows system administrators who are interested in quickly getting effective at managing computer networks with Linux based systems. At the completion of these courses, students should be able to understand the concepts behind computer network management and to manage perfectly small and medium sized businesses’ computer networks with eBox Platform.

The courses include a large set of practical exercises with eBox Platform, all of them carried out in a virtual environment installed on each students’ PC. Besides introducing the students to the platform virtualization, this allows them to model computer networks with different servers and clients and to try by themselves multiple network environments and configurations. The detailed course program is available at the CTA web page.

The maximum number of students accepted for each course is 15 and the students are selected based on their curriculum vitae and examination.

eBox Platform developer and sponsor, eBox Technologies, announced today the launch of an online store aimed at eBox Platform end users. The eBox Online Store – available at https://store.ebox-technologies.com/ – provides a channel to acquire a number of eBox based subscription services such as VoIP credit or backup storage space, support services or official eBox documentation.

“Our aim with eBox Platform and eBox based services is to offer small and medium businesses and IT service and solution providers a one-stop-shop for all the network management services” said Javi Vázquez, Chief Operating Officer at eBox Technologies. “eBox Platform has a fast-growing professional user base that is requesting every time more commercial services and we believe that with the launch of the online store we are able to meet better the needs of the marketplace.”

The recently launched version 1.4 of eBox Platform integrated – for the first time – SaaS options such as remote backup and low-cost VoIP calls aimed directly to the eBox end users. The eBox Online Store now enables the purchase of off-site storage space and VoIP credit that the eBox end users can easily use through the eBox Platform user interface.

Other services that are now available for purchase include eBox Control Center Subscriptions to manage and monitor easily multiple eBox servers and support services such as One-time eBox Support, aimed at those customers that occasionally have a need for technical support and eBox Migration Support, to guarantee successful migrations from eBox 1.2 to eBox 1.4. Both support options are provided directly by the eBox Support Team. In addition, end users can now purchase official eBox documentation from the online store – to begin with, the official eBox for Network Administrators Guide in Spanish (for eBox Platform 1.4).

Other on-line services that will be offered shortly will include One-time Priority Support, with maximum response time of one hour, aimed at those customers that have an occasional and urgent need for technical support as well as official eBox documentation in English. Furthermore, in the first half of 2010, the company will launch the Virtual CIO service, that consists of reports on network activity together with security audits, evaluations on the status of the network, warnings of potential problems and recommendations of improvements.

eBox Platform development team is happy to announce the immediate availability of the official documentation for eBox Platform 1.4, the Linux small business server. As usual, the updated documentation is available at http://doc.ebox-platform.com/, in English and in Spanish. If you want to contribute to the improvement of the official documentation, please do let us know through the Forum.

Additionally, you can find the full list of available documentation including the official documentation for eBox Platform 1.2, how-tos, tutorials and screencasts at: http://trac.ebox-platform.com/wiki/Document/Index.

The eBox Platform development team is proud to announce that eBox Platform 1.4, the Linux small business server, is now available for download at: www.ebox-platform.com/download/latest. Besides incorporating a range of new features and improvements, the eBox Platform 1.4 release features – for the first time – SaaS options such as remote backup and low-cost VoIP calls to mobile phones and landlines all over the world, making eBox Platform ever more attractive server option for both SMBs and IT service and solution providers targeting the SMB market.

Two of the most important new features of the eBox Platform 1.4 release include support for master-slave LDAP servers and Microsoft Windows Active Directory synchronization. Moreover, new features include new webmail module, PPPoE support, Multi-WAN support for DHCP and PPPoE configured gateways, new Samba (3.4.5) version, dynamic DNS updates via DHCP and new RADIUS module. Additionally, the new release incorporates a number of improvements in the Mail, Printers and VoIP modules and general usability enhancements.

For additional information regarding the upgrading, repository and full change log, please check the eBox Platform 1.4 Announcement The next stable release will be eBox Platform 2.0 which is expected for July 2010.

eBox Platform development team is glad to announce that the first release candidate for eBox Platform 1.4 is now available for download at www.ebox-platform.com/download/beta Please note that eBox beta 1.3.x releases have finally become this release candidate and eBox 1.4 will be the first stable version since eBox 1.2 (released in July 2009).

Besides shipping a number of new features and improvements (check the roadmap for deatails), the focus of this release candidate has been on allowing easy migrations from eBox 1.2 to eBox 1.4. Although we have tested thoroughly several upgrading scenarios and we have detected a very few rough edges, we would appreciate greatly your help in testing this release candidate and making the eBox 1.4 a great release!

Please remember this is a release candidate and it’s not ready for production yet. For additional information, how to upgrade and known issues please check the forum. We’re looking forward to receiving your feedback!