ITABS Lanka (Pvt) Ltd. achieved success at the British Computer Society's (BCS) National Best Quality Software Awards Competition (NBQSA 2004) by winning a coveted medal in the Application and Infrastructure tools category. The award was for the company's premier product EASYserver, which is an extremely cost-effective, user-friendly and reliable Linux based server solution for any organisation that wants to utilise Internet-based services. It allows an organisation to operate a Web server, Email server, DNS server, Proxy server (including transparent proxy), FTP server and Telnet server. It also has a firewall and routing capability with NAT support either on a dedicated (leased-line, DSL etc.) or a dial-up Internet/Intranet/LAN connection. This award is a clear indication to the emphasis that they place in their product and service delivery according to Mr. Channa de Silva, Managing Director of ITABS.
The main feature of the server is its user-friendly configuration and maintenance, which will allow an organisation to easily configure/manage/monitor (even remotely) all the services on the server via a standard Internet browser. Once the server is installed, a dedicated monitor is also not required as all the services can be controlled remotely. Another significant advantage of the EASYserver product is that it is free of user-based licensing hence there will be no incremental costs and costs only a fraction of other systems.
It is not commercially possible for most organizations and individuals in Sri Lanka to purchase high prices commercial server software due to their high costs. A majority of the organizations in this country are Small to Medium Enterprises (SME) and a majority of the population is in the low to middle income groups. Hence, most organizations and individuals engage in software piracy by obtaining copies of even the most expensive commercial software for free or at ridiculous prices. Since our legal system did not have provisions for Copyright and Intellectual Property (IP) Rights for software, it was not possible to take any legal action against an organization or an individual who uses such pirated software. But, now the legislation to recognize Copyright and IP rights for software is in place and organizations that produce commercial software could take legal action against such acts of software piracy. Hence, organizations and individuals will be forced to purchase commercial software at its market value in the future or look for alternatives. EASYserver is an ideal and timely alternative to such organizations that are looking to migrate to alternative, but reliable and cost-effective server-end solutions.
