InsightConnector - A Viable Exchange Alternative?

Fading Captain asks: "I'm sys-admin for a mid-size organization and have returned yet again to that fateful question: is Exchange the only viable groupware server in its class? Unfortunately, browser-based solutions won't cut it in my case; management wants all the bells and whistles offered by Exchange. However, I haven't seen any mention of the InsightConnector product made by a company called Bynari (with whom I have no affiliation). Bynari claims the product will fool MS Outlook clients (full, not Express) into thinking any ACL-enabled IMAP server is an exchange server. In other words, my users can potentially utilize the groupware features of Outlook (which said users are beating down my door to do) while I run an inexpensive Linux mail server behind the scenes. Sounds too good to be true. Anyone subjected this configuration to real life testing?"

Comments

IBM's Lotus Notes

[Anonymous Coward]

There's a company named "IBM", maybe you've heard of them. They sell this product "Lotus Notes" which does everything Exchange does, plus a lot more, like integration with WebSphere, DB2, Sametime, Mindspan....

If you check the market shares, you'll see Lotus Notes and Exchange hold equal amounts (around 40% each, last I checked). It's so secure, it's the email system that the U.S. Department of Defense, and the CIA, both use.

AND, Lotus Notes (the server part, "Domino") runs on AIX, Linux, Solaris, Windows 2000, HP-UX, AS/400, S/390....

Clients available for Microsoft and Mac platforms. Web access is great. And, Notes runs pretty well under WINE.

http://www.lotus.com/domino

Re:IBM's Lotus Notes

[mjpaci]

While I will agree that Lotus Notes is better feature for feature than Exchange, Notes is harder to setup properly. A poorly implemented Notes/Domino environment is MUCH WORSE than a poorly implememnted Exchange environment.

Exchange is better in environments where users hop from machine to machine (as long as all of the clients are Windows).

--Mike

Re:IBM's Lotus Notes

[loony]

Well, we here are Verizon are forced to use Lotus notes... Its the worst possible solution I've ever seen... There are several systems that were originally implemented as lotus notes databases that we are currently rewriting as web apps because Notes does not scale enough. The user interface is horrible, even if you just want to read your email the client sucks up 100MB ram and in my team one person is working pretty much on nothing else but solving email issues for our group (250 users).

In summary, stay away from Lotus Notes if you can - I've yet to meet a happy Notes user that has also used other products. Not even the guys inside IBM like it much. In addition to my own first hand experience I've a friend who works for IBM selling notes and he once told me about a nice little list containing all the reasons why you should not enable POP on a lotus notes servers... He then added "And thats all bullshit. The real reason why we dont want customers to use POP is because the client is so bad that everyone who has a chance switches to a pop client - and then its hard to explain the management why they spent mega dollar for a solution that noone wants to use."

Re:IBM's Lotus Notes

[kjz]

I simply must second this suggestion. For complex groupware, nothing on the market today can beat Lotus Notes and Domino. If you've ever used significant applications in Notes, you'll understand why.

If all you're looking for is an email server and shared calendars, don't bother with Notes. You'll be wasting your time. As an email client, Notes R5 was a huge improvement over prior generations, but still doesn't hold a candle to products like Eudora, Evolution, KMail, or even arguably Mutt! But then, I don't think tossing email around can really be considered groupware.

I've worked as a software engineer at Lotus--though not on the Notes team. I've used Notes for a huge number of applications, from basic administrative stuff to project management and bug tracking. I've also developed applications with Notes. When you have complex collaboration problems to solve, nothing can beat Notes for building a solution. Nothing.

Notes provides you with an infrastructure that lends itself to sharing information quickly and easily. I'm not talking about tossing Word documents at other people. I mean real collaboration, both free-form and with formal processes. With Notes, it's easy to set up a central repository for all documents related to a project. They can easily be linked, indexed, and cross-referenced and searched without the need for extra software. Documents can be signed and authenticated easily thanks to the public key infrastructure built into the system. Workflows can be easily built, including electronic signatures for approvals. To top it all off, most of these applications can be easily exposed to a web browser to enable collaboration with people outside your organization.

I've been often frustrated in my current job because of Exchange and Outlook limitations. Maybe I'm spoiled, but Exchange simply doesn't facilitate the kind of pervasive sharing of information I'm accustomed to with Notes. Then there's those damned email viruses. We laughed within Lotus when the VBScript based viruses first started appearing. We didn't get touched. Notes is, by default, secure enough to disallow execution of unknown scripts. You have to go out of your way to allow such a virus to damage your system. Even then, it won't necessarily harm anyone else in your organization.

I may sound like a saleman here, but I assure you I'm not. Notes isn't perfect, not by a long shot. Nor is it appropriate for all organizations. It has some serious technical problems (IMHO, of course) resulting from its long legacy, not the least of which is its heft. These problems are slowly being remedied, though. R5 made a huge leap in notes database reliabilty and speed. Connectivity to external systems (especially via standard Internet protocols) is improving as well. I expect future updates will continue this trend. However, I believe that IBM/Lotus will continue to emphasize collaborative applications with Notes over simple email and calendar sharing. I think this is the right decision, even though it will disappoint many (such as others posting in this thead.)

In short, if your users just want email and calendar software, go with Exchange or some similar solution. If, however, they need an infrastructure to support serious collaboration, complex workflows, and pervasive information sharing, Notes and Domino are the solution.

Looks good

[pong]

I tried TradeServer - an earlier product from Bynari, which was intended as an Exchange server replacement. It was composed of openldap, cygnus imapd and a webserver for publishing free/busy information. It was less than smooth to set up, and the user experience not on par with Exchange.

InsightConnector looks like a much better product though. From what I just read it appears to use IMAP as a substitute for MAPI, which is what Outlook otherwise uses in corporate mode.

Another alternative you might consider is HP OpenMail. It includes a MAPI service provider and should thus integrate tightly with Outlook, which is what most end-users (unfortunately) want.

Samsung is new OpenMail

[drowsy]

http://samsungcontact.com/en/

A similar free product

[cuvavu]

The Bill workgroup server) seems to do the mapi groupware type thing, I guess combining this with an imap mail server and an ldap (for contacts etc) server would do you for most everything that exchange does

Re:A similar free product

[Anonymous Coward]

But keep in mind, the Outlook connector you need to work with Bill Workgroup Server is not free.

Yep!

[rkgmd]

Here is a link to an article that says how winnebago successfully used bynari on IBM mainframes as an exchange substitute.

I'm intereseted in something like this too..

[josepha48]

We looked at upgrading to exchange from msmail and we cannot afford it. We need a solution that will provide group calendaring that people can sync their hand helds to and also does the mail thing that outlook / msmail does. Also it needs to do the scheduling. I'm tempted to write my own, but that could take a while.

It cannont be web based but needs to have remote access (like exchange) so remote users and all can access their calendar and mail from remote locations.

It needs to be cheap, like near free. Exchange was a 70k solution and that is to much for this tiny struggling company.

If you have ideas please reply to this post and I'll check them out...

Re:What does exchange server do?

[Circuit Breaker]

Exchange does group calendering, simple task/issue tracking management, group journalling, mailing list management and a few other things. It's not too good at doing any, but it does a lot of things good enough for people to grow dependent on it in some way.

Let Me See If I Can Actually ANSWER THE QUESTION!

[tomreagan]

Ok, I feel like I am being a little bit off-topic by not jumping into the look at this/Exchange sucks/OpenMail/Domino/Eudora/mutt debate and instead choosing to RESPOND TO THE QUESTION, but here goes.

I am evaluating this product, and my reaction so far has been good/bad. First, the program does work as advertised. It's lightweight, pretty easy to use, and integrates well with Outlook. I have used it for a couple months, and it never broke on me. I haven't tested the bandwidth usage, which I might worry about, but overall it has done exactly what Bynari claims.

However, there are some real problems with it. First, Outlook likes its changes to be instantaneous, but Insight Connector only tracks updates on sync - a combination of time (every 15 secs, configurable) and action (every time you enter a folder, theoretically). When you move email, Outlook expects it to be gone. So when you move email using Insight Connector, it looks like it has moved to the new folder, but if you quickly look at either the old or new folders, sometimes emails show up in the old location or are absent from the new. After about 15-20 seconds and you re-enter the folder, things are ok, but it can be a little confusing / disconcerting at first. Who knows if they will ever address this.

Second issue - IMAP uses Trash, Outlook Deleted Items + IMAP uses Purge/Delete while Outlook uses Delete. The first issue is that you need to move items from Deleted Items to Trash, which is redundant. Additionally, this makes things very confusing, esp. with Courier's Move to Trash on Purge feature. It is really easy to end up deleting mail from Deleted Items, only to have it show up in Trash, then when you delete it from Trash it shows up in Deleted Items again. So deleting email can be tough to configure, and it doesn't work like you might expect. If the program simply mapped Deleted Items to Trash and Empty Deleted Items Folder to Purge, things would be fine.

I'm guessing that these features work better with their additional IMAP server product, but I haven't tested that so I can't be sure.

The last problem is the most difficult to fix. Calendar/Contact/To Do items are stored as MIME emails on the server. This means that accessing the IMAP server via any other method (webmail, imap client, etc.) makes that info inaccessible. So you end up storing your data on the server, but you have no other way to access it. Beats me how to fix this one, unless they also distributed a free web client with it.

All in all, it is a very good product, but honestly better suited for the more tech savvy. Anyone who has either little computer experience or extensive Outlook experience is likely to be a little confused and annoyed, but should be able to work around it eventually.