Can We Finally Ditch Exchange?

bhsx asks: "With all the innovations going into open source software these days, why do I still need to run Exchange to meet my clients' needs? Even when demonstrating technology like LTSP mixed with any combination of OpenOffice, Star Office, even Codeweaver's Crossover Office running the latest Microsoft suite, the clincher is always over Exchange functionality. I'm aware of Bynari's InsightServer(Coincidentally, I noticed on that page, that their code is for sale) and have started using that as a possible closer, and the cost is much less prohibitive than eXchange+w2k server+CALs; but why isn't there an open source solution to this problem yet?"

"With new releases on the way, like Mandrake 9.0 and the new Lycoris can we who try to use Free Software in business environments hope for any change? Do the commercial Linux distros have any plans to implement a free replacement for Exchange, including a Win32 client-side bridge? If not, why not? Do you feel it is too cost prohibitive to imitate Bynari in this case, or is it a decision more along the lines of 'we'd rather you used Evolution and Mandrake/Lycoris/Whatever, rather than OutLook and Win32'? If it's the latter I'd be severely disappointed, and I don't think I'm alone. Any discussion on this topic would be appreciated; but what I'd really love is a community push to get this done. Perhaps a running Web-A-Thon to raise the money to simply purchase the technology from Bynari? I personally think it would be a great move towards grabbing market share from some of the other distributions, some of which have the technology but choose to keep it closed, as well as from the Great Dragon. What do you think?"

Comments

I feel your pain.

[Anonymous Coward]

At the place I work at, we have both an exchange server and a POP3/IMAP server. We catch so much flak from our users over the exchange server than the POP3 server, Then again 90% of our users use OutLook even though we have a site license for Eudora,and offer Netscape and an IMAP web client. They get lost even though we have an excellent web-directory and one of the best calendar projects around. Everyone has a public folder that they can put stuff into to share with the rest of the network byt they still insist on using Exchange. Personally I can't find any feature that justifies all of the garbage we have to put up with to get it running. Outlook sucks!(there goes my karma) Outlook crashes more often then IE, Outlook is targeted my more virii then ever. If these people would change their mail client, they wouldn't have this problem. The exchange server is jacked up as well. We have to call and have it re-set every three days and I'd bet that the network "gurus"(/sarcasm) don't know how to admin it either!!!... argh!

It's the administration costs

[TurboDog99]

First, most non-tech corporate types have heard of Exchange. Next, they like to have someone to sue. Even those projects with companies behind them don't have much to go after. Even though Microsoft has a EULA that supposedly frees them from any liability if the software screws up, it makes the corporate types feel better. Also, they can hire any MCSE off the streets to run the Exchange server. There aren't many standard certs that they can rely on when they need to hire your replacement after you've bundled together all this unfamiliar software on their servers. When you consider the hiring difficulties, lack of certifications, and lack of accountability of the authors of the software, the open source projects may, in fact, cost a good bit more than the $10,000 worth of Microsoft software. The entry costs of this software look enormous to individuals, but to corporations, it often doesn't appear to be much money. Corporations care much less about software politics than most of us do. The open source solution has the benefit of getting out of proprietary formats, but I don't think that's very high up on the list of priorities of the people making the decisions.

Re:no

[SoftwareJanitor]

At first I thought if there was an open source system that was compatible with Outlook that would do the trick, however HP offered a system that did just that, and even it didn't make a dent in Exchange's market.

Two things...

First, HP's product (now owned aparently by Samsung) wasn't really open source, although it did run on some open source platforms. It was certainly not free software.

Second, HP never really made much of an effort to try to sell their product. It sure looked like they were afraid of reprisals from Microsoft if it was too successful.

So I don't think we really know for sure what would happen if there were a free/open source calendar/messaging/groupware server that was compatible with Outlook clients... I personally think it would become quite popular, especially with small to mid sized businesses that would like to save some money in today's trying financial climate.

Because groupware is a hard problem

[sphealey]

The world can be divided into two kinds of people: those who think groupware is useful, and those who don't.

I know that mentioning Lotus Notes violates the Code of Slashdot Posting, but take a look at Notes sometime. The people who designed that system spent a long time thinking very hard about how to build a mobile, distributed, secure groupware system (note: you do not need to agree with the solution they built to acknowledge that they thought very deeply about the problem). Then - they spent a lot of time and money building what they had designed.

(Exchange is basically an imitation of the 45% of Notes' features that are most commonly used, without the thought, design, or security).

Who in the Free Software/Open Source world is going to spend that kind of time and effort? Particularly given that most Linuxians fall into the "don't like groupware" camp?

sPh

People are starting to get fired for buying MSFT

[FreeUser]

Nobody ever got fired for buying Microsoft.

I know of three people who did get fired for buying Microsoft.

A friend of mine is now providing consulting to the companies in question. Two are running Twig on Linux servers, the other has their old non-ms, non-unix server back up and working (again) while they slowly transition to Linux.

Despite all the "I'll sound wise and neutral if I make out to be 'admitting' free software's flaws and giving Microsoft its due" commentary one sees here on slashdot as either an effort at karma whoring, or an effort at pro-Microsoft propoganda and astroturfing, the fact remains that there are really very few shops that cannot do without Microsoft, and many that actually benefit from running other platforms.

What is very interesting is the number of non-technical people who are coming to realize that, and while they don't necessarilly embrace free software in general, or GNU/Linux in particular, they are beginning to recognize just what a financial, technical, and time drain Microsoft and their products have become to their enterprises, and they are looking for ways out.

Even to the point where, now, people are starting to get fired for blindly purchasing Microsoft, and treating MS propoganda as a substitute for technical research and savvy.

Its a rather refreshing change, actually.

Re:no

[ckaminski]

Once upon a time I wrote a MAPI Message Store Provider for Outlook. Never finished it, but was getting damn close. At one point I could present messages from our proprietary T&E management app via CORBA to Outlook, and read my task lists in Outlook.

So it's not impossible. Perhaps a simple SOAP/XML-RPC protocol for an open source server to make it easy to build web-apps on top of, coupled with a MAPI Store Provider, and the problem is solved.

Hell, I'll volunteer the VOLUMES of knowledge and time I spent on this (3 years ago, so my NDA's no longer apply ;-) ) to build the MSP...

chris.mapimsp@ckaminski.com for those who might like to take on such a project. Or how about this, anyone got a good calendaring system that I can just interface with?

Or a calendaring system coupled with an IMAP mail server would make it relatively easy to build mail functionality into the system without having to go to the integration levels that MS did with Exchange.

-Chris

Re:I'm working on one

[jpmorgan]

Eww, sourceforge! Actually, there's not even a webpage- waste of time until there's something I'm willing to put up. ;)

But there are about seventy-five pages of analysis of Domino and Notes in real-world settings, some design documents and a few prototypes of critical components (probably about 200-300h of work so far). I like doing things the right way, which takes time.

Things like Domino and Exchange can be pretty effective if used well, but frankley they're not very smart. My personal research interest is managing the complexity of business and research processes, and I've found that Domino and Exchange don't really help the problems much: they don't help manage the complexities, they simply space-shift them. There's a lot of really interesting and hard problems when you start trying to solve the failings of these two systems. :)

We are working on an Exchange replacement!

[IGnatius T Foobar]

Check out the Citadel project. This started as a BBS server, but it's gradually being built up into a groupware system. We've spent the last couple of years building up a solid messaging architecture and a fast, efficient server architecture. Right now it does IMAP, POP3, and SMTP natively (no tedious mucking about with Sendmail or Cyrus), and it's got a web interface, too. It has a single-instance, transactional data store. It has a pluggable, extensible architecture. And one of our design tenets is that it must be easy to install.

No calendaring yet, I'm afraid. We're still finishing up the server foundation. As soon as there are some decent calendar clients out there to test CAP (Calendar Access Protocol) with, we'll start building the calendar server.

I am absolutely serious about this project. This is not vaporware.