Wednesday, March 17, 2010

cPanel Rolls out RC Version of Windows Control Panel

Last month, web hosting automation software provider cPanel, launched an RC (release candidate) version control panel product to support the Microsoft Windows Server 2008 platform. Known as Enkompass, the software is a step away from the company’s traditional panels based on Linux, FreeBSD and other Unix-like operating systems. cPanel is currently working with Microsoft to accommodate customers who prefer a wider range of platforms offering the power of IIS 7 and Windows Server 2008.

In a recent statement, J. Nick Koston, Chief Executive Officer at cPanel, spoke of Microsoft’s dedication and involvement in the web hosting industry over the last few years. He said that the cPanel Windows development believes IIS 7 is a flexible, scalable, high performance web server that offers the improved security the industry will rapidly adopt. According to Koston, Windows’ modern architecture and extensive support for legacy products was the major selling point that prompted cPanel to expand its offerings.

Boasting a decade of experience in the field of automation software, the cPanel development team built the Enkompass panel from the ground up, designing the application in native Microsoft technologies to ensure the best in performance and flexibility. Koston noted that the product was specifically designed to be run in the distributed server environment, allowing one or more Enkompass servers to manage a multitude of servers over a Windows domain. This enables simplified automation and administration of a server farm or an entire data center facility.

To no surprise, the Enkompass user interface is very reminiscent of cPanel and WHM designed for the Linux platform. This familiarity was emphasized to help users and end customers better understand the software without having to rediscover the functions needed to maintain their daily operations. In fact, Enkompass offers many of the same features found in the cPanel and WHM environment, including tools and options designed for administrators and resellers. It is worth mentioning that cPanel has removed several unnecessary Windows components and included a few Windows-only features as well. Enkompass supports both the MailEnable and SmarterMail email programs. To support the new panel, SmarterTools developed a new lite version of the mail program that supports unlimited domains and is only compatible with Enkompass. In addition, cPanel’s Windows control panel supports Microsoft SQL Server 2005 and 2008 as well as MySQL 5.

cPanel has also made security a priority for its Windows control panel. This is done by using AD (Active Directory), which makes sure user data and reseller privileges are stored in a secure manner. In addition, the reseller platform has received notable enhancements, now boasting multi-level reselling capabilities that essentially allows resellers to service other resellers.

The people at cPanel revealed that the Enkompass control panel is to be installed on a single Windows server and then extends to provision accounts across multiple web, mail, FTP and database servers, thus allowing hosting providers to easily add new capacity by incorporating additional servers as their needs increase.

The Enkompass control panel is currently available in a test version. This license is valid for 45 days and will expire thereafter or when the product becomes available for sale.

No comments:

Post a Comment