What company wouldn't want to be able to take advantage of the benefits of Linux for messaging in a way that coexists successfully in a cross-platform environment with other Oses, allowing it to deploy integrated e-mail, calendaring, and scheduling across Windows, Linux, UNIX, and Macintosh desktops?

This is the niche that the founder of Scalix Corporation, Julie Farris, seeks to fill with Scalix 9.0, the most significant release of its Linux-based e-mail and calendaring platform to date.

"With this release," says Farris, "Scalix aims to solve many of the longstanding challenges faced by companies operating in heterogeneous environments. We've expanded our desktop support with the addition of Outlook 2003, Novell Evolution (formerly Ximian Evolution) and Scalix Web Access - our own power Web client - which now supports the Mozilla browser as well as Microsoft Internet Explorer."

"Calendaring and scheduling is a silent ‘killer app’ that has quietly become a key application in companies today," Farris continues. "Yet lack of cross-platform support and integration with different desktop platforms and clients make it difficult to fully exploit this application on a company-wide basis."

No longer. And as an added plus, all inbound and outbound messages can now be archived in compliance with governmental archiving regulations.

Scalix 9.0 is offered in Australia via its distribtor, CustomTech. Local pricing is currently $97.90 per user, said CustomTech managing director, Gordon Hubbard.