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Kolab supports multi-domain, in fact even ASP multi-tenancy, environments. And seamless updates and upgrades are part of the enterprise values it provides under support. But naturally one needs to know what they are doing. This is a complex micro-service architecture that is more powerful than virtually any of the competitors. But that power comes at the cost of loads of opportunities to shoot yourself in the foot.

I think is simultaneously the best thing and the second biggest issue[1] about Kolab - it's a very powerful piece of software targeted at sysadmins. You can setup some very complex, enterprise grade configurations with it, but to do that you need to be willing to muck around with postfix, etc. By that same note, you need to have at least basic familiarity with postfix, apache, cyrus, etc. to actually set it up in the first place, which sets the bar fairly high. (I think it took me a week of practicing in a VM before I was ready to do a proper deployment on my home server.)

[1] The biggest issue would be its general bugginess. e.g. This bug affects anyone with an apostrophe in their name, but went untouched for over a year, despite a patch being included in the original submission.

I'm currently in the process of setting up something like this.
Kolab is a FOSS groupware server that can synchronize emails, to do lists, calenders, notes, etc. across multiple devices. You can access it from the included web interface (roundcube), the recommended client (Kontact), or via Outlook with the connector installed. Android support is available via ActiveSync, and I believe Kontact Touch will be ported to Android now that Qt 5 supports it.)

If you're not interested in running your own server, there're also sites like this which sell accounts.

Here are some notes on my experiences setting it up, for anyone interested:

• Make sure you read the documentation first, because Kolab is too complex to just jump right in and hit the ground running. In particular, make sure you have a FQDN
• Kolab pulls in a bunch of different daemons, including apache2, cyrus, mysql, postfix, slapd, clamav. It's a fairly heavy-weight solution, since it was developed with enterprise users in mind.
• Multiple users can use a single installation. Users can be added/removed from a web interface.
• By default, nothing uses SSL. This is undesirable if you're planning on connecting to it over the internet. The LDAP server uses a different SSL stack to the rest of the daemons (NSS), and you'll definitely want to run it over SSL because it sends passwords in plaintext. The easiest solution I found was to create a CA cert with certutil, use that to create the certificate for use with LDAP, then export that certificate to PEM format and use it for everything else. LDAP needs to be configured online, but all the other daemons just have configuration files with entries for the path to the certificates.
• On some distros, Kontact may not be compiled with Kolab support. (e.g. Sabayon)
• RSS syncing is currently the only feature in Kontact that doesn't sync with Kolab (AFAIK), although you can embed tt-rss in the web interface.

I'm currently in the process of setting up something like this.
Kolab is a FOSS groupware server that can synchronize emails, to do lists, calenders, notes, etc. across multiple devices. You can access it from the included web interface (roundcube), the recommended client (Kontact), or via Outlook with the connector installed. Android support is available via ActiveSync, and I believe Kontact Touch will be ported to Android now that Qt 5 supports it.)

If you're not interested in running your own server, there're also sites like this which sell accounts.

Here are some notes on my experiences setting it up, for anyone interested:

• Make sure you read the documentation first, because Kolab is too complex to just jump right in and hit the ground running. In particular, make sure you have a FQDN
• Kolab pulls in a bunch of different daemons, including apache2, cyrus, mysql, postfix, slapd, clamav. It's a fairly heavy-weight solution, since it was developed with enterprise users in mind.
• Multiple users can use a single installation. Users can be added/removed from a web interface.
• By default, nothing uses SSL. This is undesirable if you're planning on connecting to it over the internet. The LDAP server uses a different SSL stack to the rest of the daemons (NSS), and you'll definitely want to run it over SSL because it sends passwords in plaintext. The easiest solution I found was to create a CA cert with certutil, use that to create the certificate for use with LDAP, then export that certificate to PEM format and use it for everything else. LDAP needs to be configured online, but all the other daemons just have configuration files with entries for the path to the certificates.
• On some distros, Kontact may not be compiled with Kolab support. (e.g. Sabayon)
• RSS syncing is currently the only feature in Kontact that doesn't sync with Kolab (AFAIK), although you can embed tt-rss in the web interface.

Of course, people that need extra security should run their own server. It seems that the software powering mykolab is 100% Free Software: http://kolab.org/

If you're not tryign them, you're not really looking.

OpenGroupware is a nonstarter.

"2009-05-17 18:02: OGo Website The OGo website is outdated, we are working on a fix. It will take a while :-) Please join us in one of the mailing lists to discuss OGo and ask any questions you might have."

Zimbra is pay-for-premium features, with prices similar to hosted Exchange. http://www.zimbra.com/products/pricing.html. Zafara has a similar model. http://www.zarafa.com/zarafa-calculator/en

I don't mind paying, but I don't want to pay the same for a work-alike drop in replacement from a small company when Microsoft's *hosted* solution is price-competitive.

Citadel is okay. But IMHO, not comperable to Exchange.

Kolab is on my list of things to try out, but I'm not optimistic. It seems that stable Outlook connectors are proprietary and cost $13.95/seat or $60/year depending on who you buy them from. Otherwise lots of alpha and beta clients http://www.kolab.org/clients

Dollar for dollar, none of these have any advantages over Exchange. Kolab has promise, it doesn't pretend to be an Exchange drop-in replacement, but a FOSS stack alternative. Are you using it in production?

Here's two: Citadel and Kolab

Among other things, Kolab is a product of a series of contracts for the federal office for Security in the Information Technology in the German Government, though both are quite secure.

Then there are two more: OpenGroupware and Zimbra. Module options are out there. If you're not finding them, then it's because you are not looking.

i love linux as much as everyone else but in reality there isn't a product yet out side of exchange that gives the amount of seemless intgration that exchange gives.

So what's wrong with the following products?
http://www.egroupware.org/
http://www.group-office.com/
http://mirror.open-xchange.org/ox/EN/community/
http://www.scalix.com/
http://www.kolab.org/
http://www.opengroupware.org/
http://www.zimbra.com/
http://www.openconnector.org/
Non-free alternatives:
http://www.novell.com/products/groupwise/
http://bynari.net/index.php?id=7
http://www.stalker.com/CommuniGatePro/
http://www.officecalendar.com/
http://www.samsungcontact.com/
http://www.zarafa.com/
http://www.postpath.com/

I look forward to reading your reply.

I had a conversation with one of the openchange developers a few months ago to talk about some of the architecture being built here, and was pleased to find out that they're aiming to do something useful. They do want OpenChange to be useful as a standalone server. That gets you something Outlook can talk to. But they're also going to expose all of the right API's and stuff so that OpenChange can be integrated with an existing store or server. That means that with the right amount of glue code, we'll be able to integrate it with existing open source groupware servers like Citadel or Kolab or OpenGroupware. All of these servers currently have Outlook compatibility, but you need to add a plugin to Outlook in order to make it work. With any luck, OpenChange will allow Outlook to talk to all of these excellent FOSS groupware platforms as if they were Exchange servers.

(Not that I'm knocking the plugins, mind you ... some of them are excellent. I'm particularly fond of Bynari's connector which is totally seamless, works with open source groupware servers, and costs far less than Exchange licenses. But a connector-free option will be nice too.)

Can you give examples of good Exchange replacements?

Yes, for that see DVL. Seriously, though you have to define what activities you need to do before you can ask for a replacement. MS Exchange is marketed in many niches and fails (on the surface) in most. The most spectacular is its failure as a mail server replacement, if you look at it as such. If you look at the wonderful cover of plausible deniability it gives executives by randomly losing and delaying mail, then that is a success.

Anyway, try looking these. Keep in mind that, unlike with M$ products, you can combine pieces of several packages.

• Kolab — http://www.kolab.org/
• Citadel — http://www.citadel.org/
• Dingo Calendar Server — http://andrew.triumf.ca/dingo/
• Darwin CalendarServer — http://trac.calendarserver.org/
• Bedework — http://www.bedework.org/
• Zimbra — http://www.zimbra.com/
• OpenGroupware — http://www.opengroupware.org/

If you are simply looking to improve reliability of e-mail they a plain Mail Transfer Agent (MTA) will do. Before it became too embarrassing for M$, it used to be recommended practice to put one of these in front of MS Exchange to improve reliability and security. Also look up ClamAV, Spamassassin and how to do greylisting.

• simta — http://rsug.itd.umich.edu/software/simta/
• Dovecot — http://www.dovecot.org/
• Postfix — http://www.postfix.org/
• Exim — http://www.exim.org/
• Sendmail — http://www.sendmail.org/
• qmail — http://www.qmail.org/

However, before you can think about "replacing" MS Exchange, you will have to get rid of the staff that selected and deployed it in the first place. They ignored all the licensing shortcomings, the bad reviews, high price and ongoing technical failure to instead push ideology over technology. People making decisions based on ideology are not going to accept any technical or economic arguments...

Can you give examples of good Exchange replacements?

Yes, for that see DVL. Seriously, though you have to define what activities you need to do before you can ask for a replacement. MS Exchange is marketed in many niches and fails (on the surface) in most. The most spectacular is its failure as a mail server replacement, if you look at it as such. If you look at the wonderful cover of plausible deniability it gives executives by randomly losing and delaying mail, then that is a success.

Anyway, try looking these. Keep in mind that, unlike with M$ products, you can combine pieces of several packages.

• Kolab — http://www.kolab.org/
• Citadel — http://www.citadel.org/
• Dingo Calendar Server — http://andrew.triumf.ca/dingo/
• Darwin CalendarServer — http://trac.calendarserver.org/
• Bedework — http://www.bedework.org/
• Zimbra — http://www.zimbra.com/
• OpenGroupware — http://www.opengroupware.org/

If you are simply looking to improve reliability of e-mail they a plain Mail Transfer Agent (MTA) will do. Before it became too embarrassing for M$, it used to be recommended practice to put one of these in front of MS Exchange to improve reliability and security. Also look up ClamAV, Spamassassin and how to do greylisting.

• simta — http://rsug.itd.umich.edu/software/simta/
• Dovecot — http://www.dovecot.org/
• Postfix — http://www.postfix.org/
• Exim — http://www.exim.org/
• Sendmail — http://www.sendmail.org/
• qmail — http://www.qmail.org/

However, before you can think about "replacing" MS Exchange, you will have to get rid of the staff that selected and deployed it in the first place. They ignored all the licensing shortcomings, the bad reviews, high price and ongoing technical failure to instead push ideology over technology. People making decisions based on ideology are not going to accept any technical or economic arguments...

Exchange and SharePoint are huge money-suckers. There are plenty of open source alternatives, such as Citadel and Kolab and OpenGroupware. Give them a try and get that migration started.

They already do. I've done support for W.A. schools that were having problems with their internal Exchange server. They were shocked when we discussed the 'real' price for Exchange. They paid less than $1000 for it including CALs and hardware. MS has some serious sweetheart deals for schools and I bet if it came down to providing even cheaper Windows and Office for schools they will do it.

That's not the real price, though. The real price also includes all the down time, extra re-builds, malware tools, etc. Add to that also the cost of missing incoming messages, missing outgoing messages and delayed messages -- these last add up to more work for the users, which can number in the 100's, rather than just the maintenance staff which can usually be counted on one hand.

Before MS Exchange was hammered through the back door, e-mail was both so fast and reliable that many used it in ways resembling instant messaging.

Worth a look:
Roundcube: http://roundcube.net/
Kolab: http://www.kolab.org/
Citadel: http://www.citadel.org/
Zimbra: http://www.zimbra.com/

If you need a plain vanilla mail transfer agent instead of all the non-essentials, then postfix, exim, qmail, the new sendmail, and simta each have their niche. They're used pretty much everywhere, even if you don't always see the evidence of them outside the message headers.

That's a nice long explanatory answer... for the first question! ;). Do you have an answer for the 2nd?

I might even add... do you have suggestions?

I have already checked out a few of 'em (not necessarily OSS):

• Zimbra
• Scalix
• eGroupware
• PHP Groupware
• Communigate Pro
• Citadel
• Kolab
• Open Groupware
• Open xChange

...of which many of them have a great potential, but I always end up having some trouble somewhere or find 'em not user-friendly/admin-friendly enough.

KDE is already working on aspects of this. Kontact has html calendar, journal and free time exports. It would not take much to integrate this will more extensive blogging and server software.

You kind of left out a party in your "win-win" analysis. How about customers? I have one very real group of customers in mind--Zimbra customers.
What are the odds Microsoft would have allowed it to flourish? I'm betting that, at a minimum, they would have jacked the price up until it was no longer as cost effective over Exchange.

If you think 14,000 pages of yesterdays "secrets" delivered by court order are enough to make things work with today's M$ formats, you have been sleeping for the last 25 years.

This whole discussion is crazy because KDE (and desktop) and Gnome both have free groupware stacks. There is no "hole" in the stack, there's just a hole in the submitter's knowledge.

Zimbra and Scalix don't count as true FOSS because they are scaled-down crippleware. If you want the full feature set of either one, you have to pay. Insert RMS rant here (this is one of those situations where it's relevant). These two companies went with a (just barely) open source license for two reasons: (1) cheap street cred, and (2) so they could help themselves to existing code without paying for it or developing it in-house.

There is plenty of good messaging/collaboration software out there that is true FOSS and not some bastardized commercial hybrid. Citadel and Kolab come to mind as a few of the most versatile.

yes, one thing is microsoft application internal integration, but do we really want to move from being dependent on one vendor to being dependent on another - even larger vendor ?
i'd guess that for companies migrating to linux and other opensource software vendor independence is taken quite seriously, at least in larger companies.
aren't there really viable solutions already available in opensource land ?
i've heard that http://www.kolab.org/ is something to consider, especially the latest version - but i haven't had a chance to try it out myself. any users of it, maybe ?

It's more than a case of killing the goose that lays the golden eggs. Gatesists made clear that they would not take "no" for an answer and would continue their plans against Yahoo one way or another. These so-called pension funds are likely part of that approach and just softening up Yahoo, while setting the media against the board in prep for its ousting. One point which is unlikely to ever make many mainstream news sites or forums, even open source ones like Slashdot, is that Microsoftologians are likely to try to replace Yahoo's board. Poisoning the press against the board is a first step.

Later, preventing the Yahoo employees from jumping off with golden parachutes might be a repeat of what MS did to Borland, except against key open source projects. Yahoo contributes in a big way to many open source projects, PHP and BSD being two Very Important (tm) ones. Getting Yahoo would crush a competitor to the spectacularly failed MSN. So without the 'chutes many would have to stay and MS could simply have them sweeping floors or making coffee.

There is also the question of Zimbra, which was recently purchased by Yahoo. MS Exchange is about the only thing that ties Windows into either/both the desktop and the server room. Zimbra is one of the few competitors to MS Exchange, besides Kolab and Citadel, none of which get much press. Quite a few shops would stop or drastically decrease use of MS products without MS Exchange. Zimbra is currently not GPL. Buying Yahoo would allow Zimbra to be put on ice as MS did with FoxPro

Advertising, aka tracking users, is another problem. MS execs want into advertising. Controlling the adservers allows a chance, finally, at income. It also allows access to be tweaked. Ads get served up first before content and delay, especially at the beginning, drastically reduces viewing time and thus mindshare. The first moments are crucial and studies show that the cap is set at 20s. A delay, on purpose or by accident, of even a fifth of a second x one million page views is hundreds of lost viewing hours. So the potential for severe abuse is there in addition to the technical problems MS services and servers are known for.

At the bottom is also a question of money. Many articles somehow neglect that much of the initial offer was funny-money, aka MSFT stock, which MS prints on demand. The noise and smoke about the attempted take over does well at drawing attention away from what must be some rather 'creative' book keeping there in Redmond.

There are plenty more possible reasons to go after Yahoo's board. Having sockpuppets poison the press makes sense for many of them.

So where is this mythical replacement I just read about? Would someone like to point it out for me?

So where is this mythical replacement I just read about? Would someone like to point it out for me?

Kolab http://www.kolab.org/ works very well with several client alternatives.
The upcoming 2.2 release will have a fully functional webclient based on Horde as well.

http://www.kolab.org/about-kolab-server.html

Perhaps they could even have several versions, such as a Thunderbird "Lite" that only does email, and a full version that does groupware (calendars, address books, etc.) If they're smart, they'll make an effort to interoperate with existing open source groupware servers such as Citadel or Kolab instead of wasting resources building their own. There really is a market for this stuff out there.

No *nix desktop runs Exchange + Outlook, nor runs Word.

Not true. You can, in fact, get Office to run on a *nix desktop. You'd just be much better off retraining people for OpenOffice or KOffice.

Word should be trivial to replace, but it isn't. It is hard to make people change, and most managers aren't willing to listen to complains just to save a few thousand (yet most should).

Put that few thousand into a training program. Done.

It would be a much more valid argument if there were still really critical features that either office suite doesn't have, but the reality is, for 99% of what you need to do with an office suite, KOffice is fine. Then, for maybe .9%, OpenOffice will cover you. That leaves .01% that you need Office for, so just make one XP machine and turn RDP on, for those very rare cases.

Exchange + Outlook is even harder, because it not only has a calendar system but also make it available to the network

Gosh, that's never been done before.

Now, if only we had a way to share them...

Trust me, Exchange + Outlook is a solved problem. If anything, the irony here is that I haven't been able to implement any of these at work, as there's not really any other good groupware clients for Windows, other than Outlook -- although most of the open servers can probably talk to Outlook. But if you can get them on Linux, I'd suggest Kontact and probably Kolab as the server.

It's even possible that KDE will be ported to Windows wholesale at some point, from what I've been reading. If that happens, just standardize on Kontact.

No *nix desktop runs Exchange + Outlook, nor runs Word.

Not true. You can, in fact, get Office to run on a *nix desktop. You'd just be much better off retraining people for OpenOffice or KOffice.

Word should be trivial to replace, but it isn't. It is hard to make people change, and most managers aren't willing to listen to complains just to save a few thousand (yet most should).

Put that few thousand into a training program. Done.

It would be a much more valid argument if there were still really critical features that either office suite doesn't have, but the reality is, for 99% of what you need to do with an office suite, KOffice is fine. Then, for maybe .9%, OpenOffice will cover you. That leaves .01% that you need Office for, so just make one XP machine and turn RDP on, for those very rare cases.

Exchange + Outlook is even harder, because it not only has a calendar system but also make it available to the network

Gosh, that's never been done before.

Now, if only we had a way to share them...

Trust me, Exchange + Outlook is a solved problem. If anything, the irony here is that I haven't been able to implement any of these at work, as there's not really any other good groupware clients for Windows, other than Outlook -- although most of the open servers can probably talk to Outlook. But if you can get them on Linux, I'd suggest Kontact and probably Kolab as the server.

It's even possible that KDE will be ported to Windows wholesale at some point, from what I've been reading. If that happens, just standardize on Kontact.

The pieces are JUST starting to come together re: replacing MS Exchange...

Right... I'm trying to do the same thing with Kolab for my clients.

I do think that this move could ruin everything for us (the good guys). With one software suite on the desktop, you can replace IE and Lookout, making the desktop safer and eliminating the need for Exchange. I will be quite saddened if the Thunderbird team messes up what they've worked toward for so long on our behalf. Branding, trust, corporate acceptance... all of this can go away in an instant.

Hey, I'm still not happy with the discontinuation of the Mozilla suite. Sure, Seamonkey is a drop-in replacement, but not without cost (see above).

In my opinion, they need to get their internal problems worked out instead of implementing some kind of organizational fork. One of the options was to form a completely separate company, which implies that new developers and other resources would have to be found. What's wrong with keeping the org chart basically the way it is, along with procuring these extra resources, which would hopefully alleviate the issues at hand? Deal with the actual problem instead of potentially ruining everything with a fork.

Kolab http://kolab.org/ is another option

the OS is going to be the last thing you change on an desktop

indeed, because even though gradual migration will take longer time and resources, it allows sloppier planning, fsckups are less serious and human factor (resistance mostly) is smaller.

Kolab and kmail are as far as I know Linux only solutions. We are currently stuck using Windows for at least some desktops.

kmail might run on windows with qt/kde 4, but that's a weak consolation :)
there are connectors for outlook-to-kolab (http://www.kolab.org/kolab-plugins.html), but migrating from outlook to kmail together with operating system might be slightly harder than separating these steps (as both can not be used on a single account simultaneously).

kmail also supposedly supports openxchange, which in turn has a powerful web interface which could be used as an intermediate version (though that might not work for roaming clients who are often disconnected).

then there's zimbra, which has even more powerful web interface in some aspects, but some parts that are crucial for enterprise are not opensource. supposedly supports outlook and thunderbird/sunbird duo, but nothing on kmail...

i'm really waiting for lightning that could be paired with a fully opensource powerful server that had almost identical gui to "fat" client...

Seriously.. Screw groupware. (speaking in general, not of the Novell product.. I am including Exchange)

This is crap that was designed when Microsoft and most people beleived that TCP/IP was bloated and the Internet was a fad.

PCs had to file sharing capacity, no serving capacity, no cpu, no ram, and everything was run around on big 'servers' that had all the capacity and were outragiously expensive.

That's why Exchange and such has all this document handling features and whatnot that almost nobody uses. It is designed as "the one big answer to all your office issues".

Which is crap. Monolithic programs are crap. Exchange is crap, and everybody knows it, and anybody that uses it will have a hard time getting away from it because they molded their company around Exchange instead of making exchange work for them.

The only sane way to get away from it for many people is to find a replacement.

Linux doesn't have replacements. It has alternatives.

Beleive it or not many large companies don't use Exchange, don't want Exchange, and wouldn't be able to use it. Not using Exchange is not putting them at a competative disadvantage and it's not costing them any more then anything else. There are plenty of ways to do what you want without it.

Remember:
MS != GOD
and
Exchange != your salvation

Same thing goes with Linux and any of the software there.

Anyways.

If you want a alternative with Outlook and Kontact support for your KDE desktop as well as web-based interfaces and probably lots of other stuff take a look at Kolab.
http://www.kolab.org/

It's suppose to be pretty nice.

The project you are looking for is called Kolab. http://www.kolab.org/ provides a complete exchange replacement with Outlook and KDE client. All requested features like calendars, contacts, tasks, PDAs,... simply work in a platform independent way.

Technically it is build around IMAP, LDAP and XML.

The # of users of Kolab is currently in the number of some hundred thousands especially in Germany and northern Europe.

Kolab is designed with scalability and security in mind. The major goal was 100% Outlook and Exchange compatibility.

This is more fud in a way, there are several choices in linux; Kontact, Evolution and Thunderbird all offer much better email functionality than Outlook. Where there is a difference is in providing exchange functionality and that too exists on several fronts, Kolab, OpenExchange and Zimbra all provide Exchange functionality and Horde/Kolab and Zimbra both provide compelling web interfaces that are equal to what is provided by Exchange in terms of shared calendars and shared addressbooks. I think the only thing not provided yet is the ability for mail rules to be seamlessly migrated from the mailclient to the server so you don't have to setup your mailrules/filters twice. Thunderbird needs solid calendaring, this is true. This is probably the biggest problem out there because in doing windows to linux migrations you ALWAYS want to migrate them in a staged format by getting them onto the apps they will be using in linux while still having them on windows and thunderbird is the only one that is crossplatform. Unless you migrate them to web based solutions like Horde/Kolab or Zimbra. Personally i use Horde/Kontact and love it although i will admit Zimbra is pretty sweet looking having been done in AJAX. http://kolab.org/ http://zimbra.com/ http://www.openexchange.com/

Looking at the review, and the links suggesting ways of escaping from M$ware, the author is missing a trick or two. The key to the Outlook piece of the puzzle is its groupware functionality. Evolution / openxchange etc aren't the only game in town - try KDE Kontact / Kolab (http://www.kolab.org/) The only downer with it is its use of openpkg (reaches for helmet)

There's Novell-backed OpenExchange

There's Germany-backed Kolab

There's RedHat-backed eGroupWare

There's all-open OpenGroupware

And that's just the tip of it. There are also commercial products.

Seriously - if you think there are not alternatives to Exchange out there, then either you have not done your homework or are seriously misinformed, or both.

...but it will be worth it. The goal, of course, is standards-based functionality for PIM (Personal Information Management) software. Yes, people really do want a replacement for Outlook, and the open source community would do well to offer complete, end-to-end solutions. Combine the Lightning client with standards-based servers and you've got a good shot at finally getting people to dump Outlook and Exchange.

Here's the thing, though: everyone seems to assume that we need an "Outlook Killer" and an "Exchange Killer." This is, in fact, not true. "One size fits all" only works for Microsoft because Microsoft forces that model. In an ideal world, everyone will select the products that fit them best, and those products will all work together. That means some folks might choose Lightning, some might choose Aethera instead, and they'd still be able to interact with each other's calendars. On the server side, the dozen or so open source groupware servers such as Kolab, OGo, Citadel, and PHPgroupware would all be able to speak common protocols with Lightning and other clients. Users would choose based on other features; for example, one organization might want strong support for forms-based workflow, another might want rich real-time communications, another might want a large selection of third-party plugins. The idea is to allow people to choose their software based on the feature set, rather than by being locked into one choice because, for example, only Exchange supports all the features of Outlook.

It's going to take a lot of cooperation but we'll get there.

And don't forget Kontact (KDE's outlook clone)

There is an Exchange clone, Kolab...but it is also quite new on the scene. I've been Sysadmining for a while now, and this issue has been on my mind for a long time also.

I think the problem has always been that although OSS has had all the parts of Exchange (most of them anyway), until Kolab, noone ever put them all together as a packages (or series of packages), you always had to kinda glue it together.

Kolab is a collection of packages, with special configuration options preset. The packages include postfix (SMTP daemon), cyrus-imap (IMAP daemon) and so on.

The cool thing about Kolab is you can use Kontact, Evolution, Mozilla suite, or even outlook (I think).

Like I said, I've always set up the systems I know best, and left it at that, but I think my next job I might try out the new Kolab 2 :

http://kolab.org/

... plus, in case you need to equip desktops, too, I suggest looking at KDE and Kolab (http://www.kolab.org/). Kolab is a nice, integrated groupware solution which includes a server and a smart client based on KDE's "Kontact".

If you need to deploy user desktops, the "Kiosk" framework in KDE makes it easy to lock down the workstations and guarantee an easy job for the administrators.

This whole topic is absolutely hilarious, almost designed to highlight the problems with Microsoft alternatives by not mentioning the best ones.

Kolab is simply amazing. It scales to thouands and thousands of users and it is dead easy to set up on Debian. http://kolab.org/

Egroupware has wonderful usability and offers far more than Exchange, all in a easy to use integrated package that allows you to pick and choose which modules you turn on or off. You need a project manager along with your calendar, tasks, email, etc. It's there. You need a troubleticket system, it's there. You want to share bookmarks, it's there. LDAP support and AD integration, it's there. Outlook and kmail plugins via xmlrpc, they are there.

The list of applications is awesome, the community incredible. The applications are modular, allow you to use ACLs to separate groups and users and what kind of access users and group get to each of the modules. Just try it.

It has been rock solid for me for over two years. By the way, I am just an enthusiastic user.

I'm surprised no one has mentioned it yet. It has outlook integration and it's open source, so there is no vendor lock-in. http://kolab.org/

http://kolab.org/about-kolab-server.html

Surprised that nobody has yet mentioned Kolab Server, considering it's now stable and usable software based on well-proven components. The server is free software, and there's the third party Toltec connector for Outlook users. This project really doesn't get enough attention...

I think http://www.kolab.org/ does a pretty similar thing

There's no replacement for Outlook, really.

Hopefully in a few years Kolab will start to overtake Outlook/Exchange. Its got good funding. Data migration is not part of the charter so the one time transition will be nasty.

*cringe*

I hate to be the one to break the news to you, but... it does, indeed, exist.

Take a look at Kolab and Kontact. They're free.

All these different projects trying to come up with an end-to-end solution, and none of them really getting anywhere. We need a standard.

A few months ago, the folks at the Citadel project took notice of the specs for the Kolab project, and began promoting its storage and network formats as a proposed standard for open source groupware. It was a nice, simple, elegant design, using vCard and vCalendar formats. Others shared the same view: for example, the Aethera people joined in, and made their client Kolab-compatible. We at the Citadel project made our server Kolab-compatible. This was shaping up to be something good.

So what did the Kolab people do? They designed "Kolab 2" which uses data formats that are neither forward nor backward compatible with Kolab 1. They completely disregarded not only their installed base, but other projects that were working towards compatibility. The new format is proprietary (documented and unencumbered, but proprietary) and gratuitously abuses XML instead of following the industry-standard vCard and vCalendar formats.

The Aethera and Citadel projects are currently in discussions to work together to create a true. open, standards-compliant, cross-platform, end-to-end groupware solution. We invite others to participate as well -- we won't ignore you the way the Kolab people have.

As for OpenXchange? As others have suggested, this is really just a couple of bells and whistles glued onto someone else's IMAP server. It's not really a true solution.

Highlights At A Glance

Some of the highlights in KDE 3.3 are listed below.

• New applications
  • Kolourpaint, an easy-to-use replacement for KPaint
  • KWordQuiz, KLatin and KTurtle expand the list of education packages for schools and families
  • Kimagemapeditor and klinkstatus make life easier for web designers
  • KSpell2, a new spellchecking library that fixes all of KSpell's shortcomings
  • KThemeManager, a new control center module to globally handle KDE visual themes
  • The Python bindings PyQT and PyKDE are now maintained with KDE in our CVS
• Integration of desktop components
  • Kontact is now integrated with Kolab, KDE's groupware solution, and Kpilot
  • Konqueror features better support for Instant Messenging contacts, with the capability to send files to IM contacts, and support for IM protocols (e.g. irc://)
  • KMail can display the online presence of IM contacts
  • Kopete can display a "now listening to" message from amaroK
  • Juk has support for burning audio CDs with K3B
• Many small desktop enhancements
  • Tab improvements in Konqueror, including scrollwheel switching
  • An RSS feed viewer sidebar in Konqueror
  • A searchbar for Konqueror, compatible with all keyword: searches
  • HTML composing, anti-spam/anti-virus wizards, automatic handling of mailing lists, improved support for cryptography and a handy quick search bar all make their way into KMail
  • Kopete gains support for file transfers with Jabber
  • Quanta Plus has a VPL (Visual Page Layout) mode to make editing even easier
  • aRts gains jack support, and aKode, a new multithreaded audio decoding/encoding library to replace mpeglib
  • KWin has new buttons to support its full features, including "always on top"
  • Over 7,000 bugs have been closed, and over 2,000 wishes have been fulfilled
  • Over 60,000 lines of code, documentation and other contributions have been committed to CVS

For a more detailed list of improvements since the KDE 3.2 release, please refer to the KDE 3.3 Feature Plan.

I'm not sure that this would help. It doesn't have the same level of integration as outlook at all, and the single most important thing about outlook is really exchange - the central server thingy that makes group calendaring work.

But wait! what's that over there, in the forested depths of germany?! It's KDE 3.3 Kolab! Marvel! (and slap forehead in horror at stupid "K" theme name).

http://kolab.org/images/shot-kde-client-calendar1. png

Mozilla talks to Exchange, besides being able to do POP3 mail. A colleage showed me this, but I didn't try it for myself. I think I saw docs about this on mozilla.org though. MAPI or IMAP? The docs can tell you which it can handle.

A related issue is the need for an Outlook-replacement to import .pst files. Mozilla can do this, and get all of the folders right, as well as attachments. This was not always so.

Personally, I'm hoping that the Ximian Connector is able to talk to the plain-jane Kolab server (which is the engine in SuSE's OpenExchange Server). I don't care to work with Exchange at all, but if I can't replace it, at least we have a few free clients that can interoperate with it. Another one of the contenders is Aethera, which also talks to Kolab.

Another critical issue is calendaring. I've seen WebDAV solutions for Mozilla, but Kolab handles this nicely.

My company offers several options for businesses looking to migrate off Outlook and/or Exchange, but I really like Kolab and have followed its development since the German government put its foot down and demanded an Outlook/Exchange replacement a couple of years ago.

The Kolab Project is a project that was sponsored by the German "Federal Agency of IT-Security". The Kolab server is based upon several open source software pieces: OpenLDAP, Postfix, Cyrus IMAP, Apache and more. Kontact (combines the following KDE apps: KMail, KOrganizer, KAddressbook and KNotes) will soon be ready for use as a Kolab client too. There are other clients too.