'Whats inside the box of tricks then?' and 'What do I get?'

The overview touched on a few of the features that the SMEOffice Server gives you, below is a more comprehensive 'Whats in the box' rundown.

Remember even if you use the SMEOffice Server to host your website, you will start to recoup the initial outlay as you will not be paying a 3rd party to host your site.

....WEB SERVER - if you are going to host your own website or e-Commerce system then this is the feature that will do most of the work. Its based on the renowned Apache webserver which is used for over half the worlds websites! It can also control your companies intranet....

....EMAIL SERVER - reliable email in todays world is critical. SMEOffice Server has a built-in mail server allowing you to receive emails addressd to your own domain on your own server. Based around Postfix, it is compatible with Outlook, Thunderbird and most email clients supporting POP3 and IMAP. Multiple Anti-Spam filters to help reduce spam emails clogging up your email client

....FIREWALL - if you have a network connected to the internet then a firewall is necessary to secure the corporate LAN side from the outside world. At the network layer, the firewall restricts access to your systems, keeping you secure. Intrusion detection and prevention systems provide a further level of security at the application layer. As an example the firewall will attempt to block spyware, trojans, web exploits, bots plus many more....

....CONTENT FILTER and ACCESS CONTROL - if you are concerned about employees surfing for personal pleasure the content filter can be configured to provide a flexible way to enforce web usage policies. White lists and Black lists also help filter traffic. For access control the proxy can be configured with user authentication to allow monitoring....

....BANDWIDTH MANAGER - prioritise applications that are more imortant than others, like VoIP, so other browsing does not interfere....

....APPLICATION FILTER - detect peer-to-peer applications like kazaa, gnutella and stop them gaining assess to the internet which in turn frees up your connection for busness applications....

....FILE SHARING - all users have access to a company wide centralised file server to store documents. This allows access to files wherever you are within the company. Simple and effective. FTP is also catered for allowing simple external file drop-off.

....VPN - Virtual Private Network - within the SMEOffice Server are several different VPN options cateringg for different applications. IPSEC VPN allowing network to network connectivity. This will allow two separate networks to connect via the internet without the need for expensive private lines and is fully encrypted. If you need to work at home, or out of the office and you have a company laptop, then the Client/Server VPN allows remote users to connect into the network simple and easily. As with all VPNs this is fully encrypted and private.

....WEB APPLICATION READY - severall applications are built into the core of the server allowing further web applications to function. These include a powerful database engine, MySQL & PHP. If you are using an e-Commerce system or CMS then these will utilise these in the background....

....REPORTING - there are several reports that can be re-called to show activity ranging from web access, emails sent & received, hits on your website, attacks blocked by the firewall through to current summary of the server itself....

Even if you only use one or two elements of the above feature set you will be saving on the total cost of ownership. 

This server O/S can (if required) be run on an off the shelf PC (x86) based system supplied by the customer as long as it meets with our requirements.  If we supply then we would recommend a stronger server-based architecture adding further reliability and replication.