Slashdot Mirror
HP's OpenMail: I'm Not Dead Yet
Jon Hill writes "It looks as if HP's OpenMail system is not dead yet and development of the project has been assumed by Samsung's software division. This is great news considering OpenMail was the only serious Unix-based competitor to Microsoft Exchange. Now if only it was strongly marketed and made well known, enterprise administrators such as myself could embrace it." For those of not familiar, essentially OpenMail is the *only* e-mail platform out there, besides Exchange that will support a whole slew of Microsoft Outlook features - something necessary in the enterprise, despite that people should know better.
Okay, I used to be a unix/openmail admin for a large financial firm. We run OpenMail on Solaris with Applix as the clients. And I gotta say, the product sucked big time. While a bit part of the problem was HP (i.e. we used to have to argue with their tech support that they actually had a Solaris port of OpenMail), but it also had some rather annoying technical limitations. I think some of the are fixed now (i.e. all of the user mail were stored in database(ish) file owned by openmail but their connections were processes running as the user, so for any mail mod operation, the system had to chown the file to the user and then back for it to work. The system was consistantly 80% I/O bound).
But even with some technical fixes and getting it away from the mismanagement of HP, I'd still be leary of it. The thing would pop numeric error codes that the developers themselves couldn't tell you what they meant. It had the bizare way of storing paths to files within its files by encoding a 6 letter filename in a 4 byte word by string 6 5 bit bitpatterns together. I spent a week reverse engineering the file formats once because the new version couldn't export personal address lists stored by an older version of the product and my head about exploded. But most telling was the fact that it didn't even protect itself from buggy clients. Applix could cause it to leak file descriptors, and HP would refuse to fix the bug because they maintained that the client was misbehaving (of course, applix maintained that what they were doing was allowed by the API).
Please, use IMAP, screw exchangesque stuff.
I like lots of people. That doesn't mean I go carting them around the galaxy with me. --Dr. Who
Sheesh... If all of you weren't so damn scared of Lotus Notes. Runs on Linux, S/390, Solaris, NT, ASS/400 (yes, the extra S is there on purpose), and others I'm sure I'm forgetting.
It may be a bit different from what you're used to, but it supports, IMAP, POP3, SMTP, and HTTP(S) methods to access your mail easily..
viruses.
viruses
viruses
The other downside is that it means users need to use .pst files (this is what some sales guy for Openmail said, it may have changed by now) and PST files can be bad (especially #1) With Exchange you can store everything in the server's database which makes it easier to back up.
I'm sure that it's probably filled with security holes, but it seems fair to point out that one was fixed long ago.
The difference between a Miracle and a Fact is exactly the difference between a mermaid and a seal. (Mark Twain)
In USASETAF we had thousands of users on each exchange server and except for running out of disk space because of no mailbox limits it worked well. But that was the admins and a political issue. My office in US Army Corps of Engineers we had 140 users on ours and only had one problem in the year I was there. But isinteg works very well. My present job we have a server with over 300 users and a ew other servers with 150 users each. All works well. I never touch exchange except to make new mailboxes or delete terminated employees.
The main thing is the hardware. You need a good SCSI adapter and plenty or RAM. 512MB is good enough for 140 users.
We use OpenMail. I read about the discontinuing development last February with great happiness.
My servers run NT. I would have preferred *NIX but it would have taken another year or two of paperwork to get the purchase order for *NIX boxes through management. I want my servers to send email notifications when certain events occur. Normally, I would just use the windows messaging API. Unfortunately, the OpenMail MAPI drivers refuse to resolve addresses outside of Outlook. I get a lot of 'net send' messages these days.
In client side processes, I was able to automate email. I had to get a reference to an Outlook folder and use that to create and send the message, but it works. Mostly. Trying to send a message to Doe, John when there is also a Doe, John C. in the OpenMail address book gives an ambiguous address error.
The real problem with anything from HP is that they couldn't write a decent driver if their life depended on it.
We have had similar issues...and that address resolution is probably the one thing about OpenMail that has been a bother, now that you mention it. But, we worked around it in this way:
1. Ensure every user has a valid and unique internet e-mail address
2. send e-mails via SMTP when events occur.
3. Use aliases or distribution lists so you're sending e-mails to roles instead of names (like admin or support instead of Doe, John)
We do this for several applications and it works fine.
Check out IPlanet Calendar Server.
It will do everything on your list, with an Outlook client, and its only about $50 per user. We had a demand for a shared calendar, and since we've started out down the Solaris/Apache/Sendmail path, (which has proven to be a very good thing given all of the Microsoft security problems) I wasnt going to put Exchange in.. It works quite well.
Please refrain from speaking about things when you have no idea what you're talking about.
n 't-count people saying that all of this could be done with opensource products, it can't right now.
To all the uninformed and never-worked-in-corporate-it-and-no-helpdesk-does
Our company researched a migration from Exchange to a linux-based product and simply could not do it. Two key features available in exchange are NOT available in opensource tools: shared calendering and shared contacts. Sure you can hack something together with ldap to handle the shared contacts but the outlook client won't support it. Everything else I looked into from Bynari et. al. required alot of the work to be done from a web interface. Forget the shared calendaring. It didn't take advantage of the normal outlook mechanism and didn't work quite right. Don't give me any shit about using something other than outlook either. When your company runs Office, outlook is a part of it. Why go and shell out more money for another mail client? Besides, no other mail clients support shared calendaring. You may not need it at home but business damn sure love it and frankly so do I.
Maybe iCal will be finally standardized and integrated into outlook but until that time, companies that already use Office, will use outlook because it's included and thus will want to use the features of it.
"Fighting the underpants gnomes since 1998!" "Bruce Schneier knows the state of schroedinger's cat"
I think it is fair to mention Caldera's Volution Messaging Server, which is marketed as a Linux-based, low cost alternative to Exchange. What is interesting is that a large part of this product is actually open source: Postfix, Cyrus-IMAP, OpenLDAP, OpenSSL, HORDE/IMP. Caldera's contribution is arguably valuable: they tied the whole mess together, added a user-friendly interface (integration and user friendliness is something open source projects are often horrible at) and added Outlook-compatible calendaring. Still, what is notable is that the open source world is already a long way there. All it needs is packaging and calendaring. Make it work out of the box without the fuss, and you got an Exchange-killer.
there are lots of Unix-based competitors to Microsoft Exchange. What about sendmail? There are not a lot of Exchange clones with code licensed from Microsoft in them that will behave exactly the same for Outlook clients. Even then there is now Evolution from Ximian. Volution from Caldera, Insight from Bynari, and various web based solutions.
How about an alphabet soup of open standards that does the job better, easier, more efficiently: POP, IMAP, SMTP, HTTP, SSL, CGI, FTP, LDAP, ABCDEFG, ETC?
Its not called competition if you're selling the same product.
there are lots of Unix-based competitors to Microsoft Exchange.
What about sendmail?
Bad example. Sendmail is one of the most non Unix pieces of software ever, in terms of modular and secure design. More to the point, its at best clone on the Exchange Internet Mail Connector. An MTA != A groupware app.
There are not a lot of Exchange clones with code licensed from Microsoft in them that will behave exactly the same for Outlook clients.
Not, but there are clones which will behave exactly (as in, equivalent functionality and no staff retraining) the same for Outlook clients.
Evolution from Ximian.
Yes indeed. Exchange connectors for Exchange5.5 and 2000 will be avaliable at the start of next year. They do all the X400 based stuff Outlook and Exchange do, including group calendaring, unsending messages, etc.
Volution from Caldera
I thought this was a system management tool and a repackaging of postfix, an imap server, and a couple of other bits and pieces. Again, an MTA and MDA are not groupware. Though it it has OpenLDAP and more importantly some way of doing the calendaring stuff it would be close. Corect me if this is the case.
Insight from Bynari
Indeed. Insight also does all the Exhcange - > Outlook specific stuff. The client is also free as in beer, so download it and give it a try. it does seem a little clunky tho, especially when compared to evolution.
Steltor
You didn't mention Steltor that seems to be the best of the Exchange comaptible groupware servers. I have yet to implement it myself but from what I understand its much better maintained and works better with existing Unix services than the others.