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!