Exchange Alternatives Round-up 365
richi writes "eWEEK has a review of Linux-based alternatives to MS Exchange: Group Where? Almost Anywhere. Focusing on how well they integrate with Outlook, it looks at Bynari Insight 4.2, CommuniGate Pro 4.2, Gordano 11 and Scalix Server 9.2.1."
Active Directory integration? (Score:5, Interesting)
So... (Score:1, Interesting)
Is Outlook really the killer app? (Score:1, Interesting)
IBM fails once again (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Active Directory integration? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Active Directory integration? (Score:2, Interesting)
It's called LDAP. And we were using it for years before Active Directory...
Oh wait, Active Directory uses LDAP too.
Replaces the meeting room (Score:5, Interesting)
What makes it so special is that it is tightly integrated with MS Office (stuff like round robin document collaboration needs Exchange to work well...it's nifty) and Active Directory integration for management, contacts, policies, etc.
There are a lot of things to get on Microsoft about, but Exchange (at least from version 2000 on) is mostly a thing of beauty. I wish my users only needed straight email, but they need to be able to things like schedule a meeting on the fly from their cell which notifys all the attending, their secretaries, etc. wo can all weigh in and do conflict resolution and get a meeting time set all while the principle in the field is talking to a client in seconds. I haven't mentioned how it all plugs into our document management system and the archiving necessary for NASD, SEC, and IRS compliance that I haven't seen from any other vendor.
If all you need is mail, you'd be insane to go the Exchange route, but if you are already building a Windows infrastructure, you'd be just as insane NOT to have Exchange.
Re:Active Directory integration? (Score:2, Interesting)
Huh? What exactly do you mean by "Full" integration?
Besides the fact that the article states that " All the products support Active Directory", what part of AD do you need to support email?
AD can be accessed using LDAP so all the information is there, and CommuniGate for one, can be externally scripted to do anything you want. I set that sucker up to externally route emails to different office servers based on an AD attribute.
And yes, Exchange could do the same thing only a lot more expensively and if anything goes wrong, have fun troubleshooting.
No mention of Ipswitch? (Score:1, Interesting)
check this out:
http://www.ipswitch.com/products/collaboration/in
From their site
Save time with shared calendars and contacts
For many teams, working together productively depends on the ability to easily schedule meetings and share calendars, contacts, and other information. ICS includes powerful collaboration tools that allow Microsoft Outlook users to share their own up-to-date contact lists, calendars, task lists and Outlook notes securely within your organization. You can - with permission - view and edit your colleagues' calendars and contact lists.
Anyone have experiance with Ipswitch?
(I dont work for Ipswitch)
Re:Active Directory integration? (Score:3, Interesting)
A 486 running a mail server and fully integrated web-based calendaring?
Did I say fully integrated? I don't recall saying that.
My only point (besides venting steam caused by having to administrator Exchange) was that a simple little web-based program could replace all of the calendaring functionality of Exchange. If you got a little bit more fancy you could build it on an SQL backend (mySQL anyone?) and share the appointments/schedules within the entire company.
How does any company besides Microsoft turn a simple a e-mail server and scheduling software into several hundred megabytes of bloat that requires a dedicated machine for a lousy 30 user environment?
How about alternatives to Outlook? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Replaces the meeting room (Score:3, Interesting)
From Wikipedia:
"Microsoft now appears to be positioning a combination of Microsoft Office, Live Meeting and Sharepoint as its collaboration software of choice. Exchange is now to be simply email and calendaring."
I hope you're forecasting the increase in licensing costs for all the functionality you are currently experiencing under Exchange Server.
Re:Active Directory integration? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:How about alternatives to Outlook? (Score:4, Interesting)
Funny how the best software MS writes is for Mac
Re:Replaces the meeting room (Score:1, Interesting)
That's stupid just because you don't experience in a big enviroment doesn't mean you don't understand what the product does. But Exchange is WAAAAY overpriced for what it does.
[...]IT infrastructure for where I work (a multibillion dollar, multinational financial services company)
Why do you feel the need to say something like this either come out and say the company or just say "a big company" you just make yourself sound like an arrogent ass when you agrandize the company like that without saying what the company is. Not there is any way anyone can verify the claim either... sorry off track just a pet peeve of mine.
Simply, Exchange provides for email service in all its forms (pop, mapi, imap), news server, webmail backend/front end (along with IIS), public folders, collaborative contacts, mails, document checking, etc., global contacts, shared calendering, shared tasks, etc.
And your point is? any good Groupware program does any and all of these things. and some do it better and have been doing it longer i.e. GroupWise. Basically what you are saying here is that it is an MTA with some calendaring features built in. And how does Exchange check documents? are you sure you're not talking about sharepoint or Office?
I wish my users only needed straight email, but they need to be able to things like schedule a meeting on the fly from their cell which notifys all the attending, their secretaries, etc. wo can all weigh in and do conflict resolution and get a meeting time set all while the principle in the field is talking to a client in seconds. I bet you can get any of the major
I haven't mentioned how it all plugs into our document management system and the archiving necessary for NASD, SEC, and IRS compliance that I haven't seen from any other vendor. The point here is that you need Seperate Document management and Archiving solutions
[...]but if you are already building a Windows infrastructure
your already insane
Oracle Collaboration Suite (Score:3, Interesting)
Groupware never got anybody laid... (Score:5, Interesting)
Groupware Bad [jwz.org]
And I said, "Jesus Mother of Fuck, what are you thinking! Do not strap the 'Groupware' albatross around your neck! That's what killed Netscape, are you insane?" He looked at me like I'd just kicked his puppy.
Re:All too big - Hula is a better way to move (Score:5, Interesting)
I really like Exchange4Linux (Score:3, Interesting)
Exchange4Linux is an open-protocol, open-source Exchange Server replacement. It's written in Python, and the Outlook connector, while also written in Python, is not for free, but reasonably priced (small quantity price is $50 IIRC). Everything, and I mean everything is stored in a PostgreSQL database. There is something very, very cool about being able to run arbitrary SQL queries on your todos, calendars, contacts and even emails. It brings a level of data integration together that sometimes makes me want to weep. Perfect example: Our customer service department has a rotating "on-call" person. They have a calendar in which they organize who's turn it is. I query the DB once a day to let my Asterisk server know who to redirect the call to. Totally seamless, and that's just a small small example.
Neuberger-Hughes [n-h.com], the company responsible for Exchange4Linux also does the whole turnkey solution for those who want someone to yell at but still want the peace of mind that having your data in open software can only provide.
I don't work for them, I am just a happy user of their software.
Re:IBM fails once again (Score:3, Interesting)
You did even less. Wikipedia does less. It sounds like Active Directory is good for providing a company phonebook, but that doesn't sound like that big a deal.
So can someone actually explain - besides calendar, address book, and email - what does it do? Yes, I realise that it allows some nice conflict-resolution and organisation on those fronts, but still... what the hell are these other "features" that people ambiguously describe with buzzwords and acronyms - don't say "collaboration", "groupware", or "XPQF" or "messaging". What do you _use_ it for?
Re:Active Directory integration? (Score:2, Interesting)
what about kolab? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:GroupWise? (Score:3, Interesting)
I just migrated my servers from 5.5EP to 6.5, and it is by far the best solution IMHO. Now, we are a Novell Shop mind you.
We've seen every iteration since the WordPerfect Messaging Server 4.x days. I am debating going to 7.x as the latest version is so solid from the server end and client end (you have to make sure you admin your servers right and not take shortcuts or cheap out, then it's solid). It's decreased my support time dramatically - the users love it, expecially compared to 5.x - the jump we just did was like foing from Exchange 5.5 to Exchange 2000, oh much more fun now.
Re:They forgot about ExchangeIt (Score:2, Interesting)
If that makes me a zealot, then I guess that I'm a zealot. But I'm a zealot that can sleep at night because his network works.
Re:Kerio Mailserver 6.1 (Score:2, Interesting)
We are running Kerio 6.0 as an Exchange replacement (we were on Exchange 5.5). Most of our users are on Microsoft Outlook 2K or 2K3. Our main reason for selecting Kerio was its marketting as an Exchange replacement. Here are some of our experiences:
In short, my bosses are forcing us back to "how things were". We are going to bite the bullet and go back to Exchange. I'm bummed, because there is a lot to like about Kerio (the web interface, integrated antivirus and spam and management are all nice, and it's a lot easier to manage than Exchange) - but the Outlook Connector's poor functionality make it an inadequate replacement for Exchange
Unlike my predecessor, take a look at the Kerio forums [kerio.com] before you buy this product.
Re:They forgot about ExchangeIt (Score:4, Interesting)
Yup, I evaluate expensive software suites now and then, and if you have a "contact us" on the pricing page, it's a negative mark. If I am looking at e.g. 20 different packages, I'll only trial 3 maybe 4 of them. If you have too many negative marks, then you get binned early.
Go ask your HR department how they deal with CV's and job openings. Same process; you have to get the list to a managable size.
What's not intuitive? (Score:1, Interesting)
Replacing Exchange isn't the real problem (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:If you want to get off the MS crack (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:If only Evolution has a Windows port... (Score:1, Interesting)
The client side (equiv of outlook) has been done for 1) web clients and 2) *nix.
Missing: client for windows, client for mac. Which is only, like, 90% of the client population (and 2/3 of my client population)
Granted, the web client is good for 90% of the client situations.
Re:GroupWise? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Is Outlook really the killer app? (Score:3, Interesting)
P.S. My SO can figure out how to use Oo.o better than I can on our home Linux box because her 8 years of experience with MS Word trumps my two decades of UNIX command line wizardry.
Re:GroupWise? (Score:1, Interesting)
The real downside is the way it's managed. Consoleone is a terrible memory hog. It was fine when managed with Netware Administrator, and would probably be better managed with iManager.
Re:GroupWise? (Score:3, Interesting)
HAH (Score:3, Interesting)
Even with a roseta stone people can't figure out how to get by, too many advanced things in OopenOffice.org take too many steps the net betas are better but still not even close to Microsoft Office.
And I still hate Microsoft...
Oooo I'm praising Office I must be a troll!