SCO Unix was mature and sold itself (mainly to repeat customers and replicated sites). The VAR relationship was even more problematic. Even though the reseller organizations had been combined, in reality the prior SCO resellers made much more from each SCO Unix sale than from sales of Caldera OpenLinux, so they were not anxious to move existing customers from Unix to Linux. And even those that were supportive of Linux, did not necessarily see a strong value add for Caldera International products and could often sell Red Hat Enterprise Linux instead. The Volution program was created out of the desire to create a layer of functionality on top of Linux, and Open UNIX 8 Linux Kernel Personality, that would add value to the operating systems offerings. It would end up having four main components: Volution Manager, Volution Messaging Server, Volution Online, and Volution Authentication Server, with an effort to build a common console for a unified user experience. As Ransom Love said, "Volution is a complex and extensive platform". In January 2001, Caldera Systems first shipped Volution Manager, a browser-based systems administration solution. Intended for service providers and corporate accounts, it was based around OpenLDAP and Novell eDirectory. It featured some sophisticated functionality, but its initial user interface was limited in some ways and the product was costly. Caldera Systems made a deal in February 2001 with Acrylis, Inc., a company based in Chelmsford, Massachusetts, to offer Acrylis's subscription-based service that allowed system administrators to test and then update Linux systems over a network. The service also delivered alerts to customers regarding the necessity for upgrades. The effort was an attempt to compete with the Red Hat Network service and gain a source of recurring revenue. Then in May 2001, Caldera International bought the WhatifLinux technology and assets outright from Acrylis, and changed the name of the service to Volution Online. Caldera Systems had earlier begun work on a Linux equivalent to the Microsoft Exchange Server that was aimed at the small to medium business market. This would eventually become the Volution Messaging Server, which was released in late 2001 for use on Caldera OpenLinux and Open UNIX 8 with LKP. It offered shared calendaring and scheduling options, SSL support for e-mail, simple configuration, and integration with Microsoft Outlook. However, there were already a number of mail servers available for Linux and none of them had taken off in the business market. Caldera Systems, and then Caldera International, had substantial experience with Web-Based Enterprise Management (WBEM), and its OpenWBEM implementation won the Best Open Source Project Award at LinuxWorld Conference and Expo in February 2002.