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Open Source Microsoft Exchange Replacements?
Carl Farrington asks: "Do you think you could try to raise public awareness of the importance for an open source replacement for Microsoft Exchange (Outlook/MAPI compatible for shared/public folders). Current offerings are SuSE Linux Groupware Server, Communigate Pro (Stalker Software), Samsung Contact (ex. HP OpenMail) all of which are not open source / free. Kroupware is in development, but there will be no Outlook Connector for it. otlkcon is in slow development as a possible connector for Kroupware. There is also OSER (Open Source Exchange Replacement) which again looks like it needs more help. Is there any chance of getting some people to back this stuff? It's so important and is probably the major problem facing Linux as viable replacements for Win2000 servers." While this seems to be a question that
keeps
popping up in one form or another, it's always worthwhile to come back and point out alternatives, in development, that might need your help to get off the ground and running. So, if you're looking for an alternative to Exchange, would you be willing to contribute some time to one of the projects listed above? If you've been using Unix as an Exchange replacement, what did you do and how well has it been working?
"Outlook not so good"
You're right, Communigate isn't open source. It is, however one of the greatet things since sliced bread in terms of functionality/ease of use/stability. It runs on open source, isn't from Microsoft, works wonderfully, and isn't all that expensive.
Good enough for me.
Mod point free since 2001
I am using Cyrus IMAP as an IMAP server, with the Bynari Connector to do Contacts and Calendars for outlook. This is less than ideal because storing contacts and calenders in a mail system encoded with tnef is plain ugly, but it works. For the windows desktops at least. We don't plan on Linux desktops just yet, but servers, almost totally converted. Samba + OpenLDAP + Cyrus IMAP + Postfix. It's working amazingly. Nothing to patch, no crashes, fast, secure. It's a match made in heaven. Outlook works 100%. I'd like to find a calendaring/contact system that didn't use Outlook though... perhaps something that stored in LDAP, and was very flexible. I dont know what to do with Calendars though.
I think part of the problem is that what people are looking for requires a lot of work to create. Exchange does have a lot of features that, while they may not work as well an OS equivalent, work adequately well, are (somewhat) easy to administer and are integrated together. Could a good alternative be put together, definitely, but the amount of work may be more than some are willing to put forth without monetary compensation.
Slashdot...it's like Fox news, but without the biased sl...or maybe not.
Many people have become familiar with using services such as hotmail or yahoo as their main form of email.
You could take this oppertunity to use something like http://www.phpgroupware.org/ which will replicate all the mail/collabaration/task/meeting scheduling functions of Outlook.
Also its free and open sores software, take a look at some of these screenshots or try out the live demo and see for your self how great it is.
I'd like to mention that I have no affiliation except having a linux server hidden somewhere at work running this and allowing many people who get stupid outlook viruses an account on it too see if they like it, so far I'm getting a great response.
There is no god
We started using the Open Exchange groupware where I work, and I must say, it is a very capable and professional package. Beyond the usual email, adressbook, and calendar functionality, I have used it to track jobs and projects, maintain document revisions, and it has all worked very well. I have even become a fan of the web interface, because it really is convenient to be able to access all of the above from any given computer.
Definately a contender to keep in mind...
It's hard to tell the cool to chill, my favorite hotel room has a view to an ill.
There's something called BILL workgroup server, and it acts as an exchange replacement.
Here is the url www.billworkgroup.org
..where a good majority of the features provided by Outlook can be incorporated into a web based application, thereby reducing the threats created by using Outlook, and allowing portability:
....
- scheduling, contact management : easy
- Attachments : easier....
- calendar sharing : easy...
Give me the man hours, a good development team, a solid web sever and database server, and you could have a semi-decent web based, accesible from anywhere, email solution. Email is such a simple application, and its so feasible to do the same work as a client, via server to browser interaction....
if none of this makes sense, its cause im running on about 20 cups of coffeee...
I lost my concept of community when my community lost all concept of me.
- SMTP - Outlook Express and Netscape/Mozilla and most other email clients can send mail using SMTP.
- POP3 - Older standard for email retrieval, which Outlook Express and Netscape/Mozilla can use.
- IMAP - Newer standard for email retrieval, which can manage group and folder types of functions. Many email clients use it; not sure if Outlook does.
- NNTP - Usenet standard for groups - works Just Fine, and there are lots of clients, including Netscape / Mozilla's mail clients and newsreaders.
- Web Conference Boards - There are *so* many of these out there, and they're often a much better choice than shared folders or similar groupware. Depending on how many messages you're trying to handle, your users will often find simple dumb systems friendlier than powerful complex systems.
- HTTP and/or FTP - If you're trying to publish files to people, these are much better standards than email. Some of the web conference board things have convenient uploading interfaces, or otherwise you'll need to do permissions of some sort.
- Shared File Systems - SAMBA, etc. - If you're enough of a Microsoft shop to be running Exchange, surely you're also running a file server network of some sort. Set aside a directory for people to drag files into, and tell them to mount it as their "G Drive" or whatever.
- Calendar Systems - This is the other hard one to replace, but I've seen a number of calendar systems out there, typically web-based, and you can email people URLs to click on if you want to integrate with email. The one thing MS seems to have done well is encourage Palm and Nokia and other PDA makers to develop tools for syncing their PDAs with Outlook Calendar. I think some of the Linux-based systems have probably done that.
MS Outlook lumps a whole bunch of functions into one program, so if your people get used to using any two of them they tend to be hooked for life. It's not a very good choice, and if you're going to do something like that, it's much cleaner to use a browser as the one big tool you're hooked on.Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
measure a product on it's ease of use, stability, security, cost, etc. whether or not it is OSS or not shouldn't be an issue. it seems that exchange is a rather nasty program to admin, but it also seems that groupwise from novell is quite good. my school district uses it, and it is overkill for most teachers, we just need mostly simple email, but all the collaborative features are good. i think our problems have been on the admin side, since school districts aren't known for paying top dollar. if there was an OSS replacement fine. but it isn't the be all, end all. sorry. unless you're RMS or something, everything isn't about software philosophy. there are tons of good middleware apps for linux, and more to come. whether they are oracle, notes, db2, etc. just let the best program win.
My problem? I was perfectly gruntled, until some numbnuts came by and dissed me.
I think what most people forget is that in order to replicate Exchange's functionality, or even come close to offering a fraction of the features of Exchange, you're going to need to put in close to the same amount of work that Microsoft did. If I remember correctly, Microsoft had a team of no less than a hundred programmers working full-time for two years to produce Exchange server 2000. Logic would dictate that the Open Source community would need to do the same, with the same amount of resources. A considerable undertaking. I believe it would make more sense to enlist in a corporation like Red Hat (who doesn't have the same amount of resources as Microsoft, but they do have the talent and organization) to begin development on a project such as this.
End of Line.
It seems that, for years, I swore our IT department would not convert off of Groupwise until we had an open-standards alternative that gave us the same integrated mailbox, public information store, and calendar solution. That was back in '97. When nothing prevailed to grasp as an integrated standard, the pressure finally caved when we had to make the choice between upgrading Groupwise or migrate to Exchange.
As we reviewed the options, we noticed that the only reason we were still using Novell servers was to support Groupwise. It was at this point that we did a cost-of-ownership study and found that supporting aging Novell servers was going to cost us more over time than a single platform solution from M$. The choice was made to convert.
Our conversion was very successful, and recieved much praise from the end users. Why? Because they all wanted to use Outlook. No one really cared that we were using Exchange, what they really wanted was Outlook. (Btw, the Groupwise plug-in to Outlook sucked at the time, maybe better now, but back then it was terrible)
As an Outlook user myself, I have to say that it is a great application. It works well, provides many options, and integrates with everything.
With that said, I believe our IT team would readily accept an opensource alternative, particularly if we could cut down on the cost for licenses. Not only that, but many of our partners and clients would convert too if they didn't lose Outlook. Honestly, I think fewer and fewer people outside of IT even know what Exchange is. All they want is outlook.
I can't offer much to the development of an Open Source Exchange replacement, but I sure would love to see one sprout up.
Goals are deceptive - the unaimed arrow never misses.
Here's a project worth checking out: Citadel/UX. Admittedly it's only about 80 percent of the way there, but the thing that makes Citadel stand out from its open source brethren is that it's not just another Cyrus/Postfix/OpenLDAP/etc. rollup with some loose stiches put in to make them act like a single system.
/etc/mail/complicated.cf and /etc/init.d/S90scary.sh, but they don't mind running a "setup" program and then customizing with a web browser.
We're actually taking the time to build something good from scratch. We've got a true journalling database oriented message store (thanks to Berkeley DB) including single-instance store (a message sent to 100 users doesn't get saved 100 times). Built-in IMAP, POP, SMTP protocols. A nice calendar service, and a Web interface. It's even got its own instant messenger.
The thing that's important, though, is that it's designed to be easy to install. One of the very few things that Exchange 5.5 had going in its favor was that it was relatively easy to install. Citadel aims for that as well -- plug in the RPM's or tarball, run the setup program, and you've got a basic server up and running. Inexperienced admins might be scared by editing
Where we really need the extra development work right now is to start writing some connectors for popular client software. Currently we are aiming for 100 percent compatibility with the Kroupware project (so you can use the Kontact client without having to install the clunky Kolab server) and eventually Evolution (which has a 'connector' architecture). Eventually we'd prefer to do everything in Mozilla (using Mozilla Mail and Mozilla Calendar), since it's cross-platform.
Again, it's not a drop-in Exchange replacement today, but it's a project worth watching, or better yet, helping out on.
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they should name it Linux Open Source Exchange Replacement
sulli
RTFJ.
Most of the problems seem to be with MAPI and Microsoft COntrol what Outlook does. However, on Linux we aheva hugely ca[able email program in Ximian's Evolution. If it were to exist on Windows and have a server based company wide contacts calendar sharing and task managment Microsoft would be under pressure even on their home turf.
I'd go as far as to say that Exchange has been their key product with regards Microsoft's domination of the Enterprise and the establishment of their monopoly. Exchange's role in Microsoft's success is often massively underrated.
They're office suite has only recently become the best. They're operating system has always been technically behind others. Every other Microsoft product has had arguably superior alternatives. Everything but Exchange.
But until recently nobody, other than maybe Lotus Notes, offered worthwhile groupware solutions. The Exchange/Outlook combination has been superior to anything else and is idiotically easy to administer.
If you ask businesses why they use Microsoft (and I'm talking about the tech guys here), the vast majority will list Exchange as a primary reason.
Free Gamer - Free games list and commentary
It really comes down to people being cheap, nothing more.
Exchange 2000 (I've tested 2003 and it's going to be impresssive) with the current SP is quite nice. During the initial launch there was a lot of bugs, noting the first SP was bigger than the cd install.
Now, it's pretty rock solid. We use a sendmail front end under solaris to do our initial queuing, aliases and distribution. Being skeptical over migrating to Exchange we decided to keep our sendmail frontend in case of a catastrophy. From there we have 4 exchange servers, 3 in the US, one in Europe. It could be done with 1 but we cater to remote offices to make their lives more pleasant.
We previously had a Netscape + pop3 implementation about 3 years ago.
We have 1 exchange and domain administrator for nearly 600 employees. One. The amount of problems and headaches we go through is quite minimal now.
For the price you pay Exchange just works now. You can have a functional server up OS + exchange install in about 3 hours if you know what you are doing.
Oh and screw the smtp gateway for antivirus scanning. That won't do you any good if an internal user sends an email to another. We've been using Antigen from Sybari. It does real-time scanning with 3 different engines, incoming and outgoing. It will also scan any message you move between folders or grab from a personal folder you just attached. We've never seen a single virus, Not 1, get through in nearly 3 years.
I know I've heard many horror stories of Exchange 2000, Outlook and viruses. I truly believe if you take the time to sit down and plan the installation (most people just jump into shit blindly) you can have a very competent mail system running on a Microsoft product. The problem is most Microsoft admins are guilty of being next next next admins and give MS a bad name.
They discussed and tested the following
Only Easygate and Samsung had full Outlook MAPI support, whilst Communigate and Bynari Insight Groupware had partial support.
The April archive is online and link is here. There are a number of PDF files with the article details in them.
What utter bollocks.
Email is email - SMTP/POP3 provide a perfectly good delivery service.
The mail and the folders should reside on the server. The status of the email (read/unread) should reside on the server. Using POP3, it ends up on the client. Even if you configure the mail reader to leave mail on the server, you don't have server based folders, nor do you have the server keeping track of which messages have been read.
Equally, a mailserver doesn't typically corrupt its own data or require frequent reboots.
Look, if you want people to believe your arguments about whether Linux is better, quit spewing FUD. You complain when Microsoft spews FUD about Linux, don't do the same. Many, many organizations run Exchange with no corruption of the data store and no need for reboots. Get over it - Exchange is a good product.
VB programmers really, really should keep it to themselves.
Does that make you feel better? Not everyone codes in C/C++/Java. Big whoop. I bet I get a lot more done for the company I work for than a C programmer would. Right tool for the job.
Well, at least that eliminates Outlook.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
MS Exchange Server (server end; NT only), MS Outlook (client end; Win32, MacOS). Very limited support of open-protocol clients (IMAP, webmail?). Microsoft Corp. wants to sell you Exchange 2000, these days, but Exchange 5.5 is still very common.
Lotus Notes / Domino (server end, Linux supported), Lotus Notes (client end; Win32, MacOS). Limited webmail access (iNotes).
Novell Groupwise. http://www.novell.com/products/groupwise/ Server end runs on either Novell NetWare 5/6 or WinNT. Client end is proprietary Win32 client or webmail. A native Linux client is under development.
SuSE Linux Openexchange Server (formerly SuSE Linux eMail Server). Standard, good open-source components (Postfix, Apache, Cyrus IMAP, OpenLDAP, OpenSSL) preconfigured to work well with one another, plus a couple of proprietary components: YaST2 for graphical administration, and SkyrixGreen for integrated scheduling and group discussions (shared folders). Client access from any OS, including but not limited to webmail. A full-functional trial version (lacking only "maintenance") is available for US $20 at http://www.suse.com/openexchange/slox_eval_form.ht ml . Sites are known to scale well to at least 1,000 users per site. The largest deployment yet known (March 2003) is 1,900 users.
Bynari Insight Server, http://www.bynari.net/ . Server end is Linux-based. Intended as a plug-compatible replacement for MS-Exchange Server, based on POP3, IMPA, SMTP, and LDAP, but also with full support for all the special, proprietary MS-Exchange Server RPC-based protocols for group discussion, scheduling, contact management, task lists, etc., when used with MS-Outlook clients. Review: http://linuxjournal.com/article.php?sid=6734
Bynari InsightConnector, http://www.bynari.net/ . Extensions that load into MS-Outlook clients to let them perform MS-Exchange-type functions (scheduling, contact-management, public folders) without needing an MS-Exchange server, using only open-standard IMAP, SMTP, and LDAP servers, instead.
Samsung Contact (formerly HP Openmail), http://samsungcontact.com/en/ . Server end can be Linux-based (or Solaris/AIX). Based on SMTP, IMAP, POP3, LDAP. Supports proprietary protocols for e-mail, scheduling, etc. native to Samsung's Contact client (which is available on Linux and Win32). Webmail access. Implements Microsoft's (documented, for a change) MAPI protocol for scheduling, public folders, offline folders.
Oracle Collaboration Suite, http://www.oracle.com/ip/deploy/cs/ . Formerly Steltor CorporateTime, http://www.steltor.com/, until that firm's recent acquisition by Oracle. (That product is said to have emerged from Netscape Calendar.) Does IMAP, POP3, SMTP, E-mail, real-time conferences, voicemail, scheduling. Apparently implements all of the special, proprietary MS-Exchange Server RPC-based protocols for group discussion, scheduling, contact management,
Is that like 'HackingCoughWare' or, perhaps, the more subtle 'ScreamingInfantWare'? Ok, perhaps this is a troll, but I've historically had a hard enough time selling open source stuff into various enterprises. ("MySQL? Aww, what a cute name. Now go get us something that sounds professional." I've heard that. Literally. Twice.) I realize we're all smart enough to know better.
Selling a product is as much (if not more) selling an image than it is selling features, reliability, etc. At least for the PHBs I've had to sell to in the past. Trying to bring a mission critical piece of software in that's named after an anoying childhood malady will, before anything else, elicit a bunch of laughs from the powers that be, and then there's that much more of a hole to dig out of.
Oh, well, there goes what little karma I had, but I had to say it.
Look - here is a real one for ya all. Dual PIII-1000 system, 1 gig of RAM, mirrored pair of 72 Gig 10K SCSI drives in a 2U SuperMicro chassis connected to a 100 mb/s burstable circuit at level 3. That's what my company uses to host our exchange users; our own use plus those we host for.
Setup? Lesse, a basic load of W2K, hit windows update and did'em all. Single vendor provided driver was for the SCSI 0-channel RAID card. Time? About an hour.
Loading Exchange 2000? First, run dcpromo to turn this box into an Active directory domain controller. This process also automatically installed and configured the DNS. Then stuck Exchange 2000 CD in drive, followed the next next next, finish clicks and sat back. About 30 minutes later Exchange was running.
Configuration? Added domain name, added a user and left the checkbox for "Create Exchange mailbox" checked. Bingo, new user with automatically assigned e-mail address based on policy we wanted to use.
Full web access. Done. Full shared calendars and public folders. Done. Delegate access with full ACLs. Done. Offline support. Done. POP3 support. Done. IMAP support? It's in there. NNTP? All set. Instant Messenging? It's in there. IRC (chat) - It's in there. x.400 and SMTP, of course. No open relays by default. S/MIME? Digital certificates? Yep and yep. The list goes on, I won't bother with any more.
Total time to get up and running, a single afternoon.
OK, so it's up - now what? Well... nothing. Every night we do a backup, using built-in APIs that allow backing up without taking the information store offline. Virus scanning runs automatically and updates itself daily automatically. Antispam is fully automatic using statistical and phrase filtering. Nothing to do but look at the cute charts of spam blocked by user. Every so often there might be an applicable windows update to do - ok, so, hit windows update, download and (the ONLY part that sucks, I'll admit it) reboot.
That's it. Our uptime is 100.00% The only reboots are planned. Period. The hardware is not esoteric. The loads are easily managable on a simple dual PIII.
Client performance is flawless, and very fast. Database corruption? What's that? Never seen it. During preproduction testing we regularly would pull both power cables simultaneously while the machine was doing an full-text indexing crawl across our 60 gigabyte stores. Upon restoring power the entire server came up without a single hitch and without any delay whatsoever; the failed crawl was detected, and restarted. Transaction logs were played back and 0% loss sustained. We did this at least 30 times without ever suffering a single corruption or anything more than a few red Xs (something needs fixing) in the event log (followed by a few yellows (we're fixing it) then pretty blue I's to tell us "it's fixed.")
Anyone that thinks Exchange is just a POP/SMTP/IMAP server hasn't a clue. Anyone who would like to tell you that Exchange crashes is either lying or can't run a server. Period. With over 75 Exchange boxes in production and never a single chance to test our off-line disaster recovery plan -- we could not be more pleased.
Guys, does it have to be that Outlook-compatible?
No, just shared calendars would work for me. Right now I have a RedHat server running UW IMAP, LDAP, qpopper, qmail, and squirrel mail. It works great, except all of my lusers want to share Outlook calendars. I've tried to get them to use the calendar features in squirrel mail, but they revolted and screamed like little children "Why can't I do this in Outlook. Other companies do it, why can't we." I even went as far as adding an IE shortcut in the outlook bar, so the squirrel mail pages would open up inside of Outlook, but they still screaned like little infants for their 3 am feeding. I wish I was anaccomplished programmer so I could contribute to a project, but unfortunately I am a lowly little SA that makes all of the shiny boxes talk to each other. I would gladly contribute documentation, money, or even be a beta tester. Hell I would give up my left nut if thats what it would take to be able to just share calendars for a reasonable price. I've looked into some of the replacement products, and for the price I might as well buy Exchange. Now that I'm done ranting, please somebody out there, please give me a way to just share multiple calendars. If someone could do that then I will worship you like a God!
Shouldn't OSS be about solving problems that people want to work on rather than trying to be a cloning engine for Microsoft software?
Bingo. Sometimes I shake my head at the lengths people go to bash M$ at every chance they get, then spend tons of effort to clone them. The first blatent one was when RH shipped thier default windowing system to be FVWM95. I still havn't gotten over that one. KDE and to an extent GNOME are not too far behind either. For example. Why in the world do they put the start thingy/taskbar/icon collector at the bottom of the screen? Because M$ put it there first. Take a look at your browser. See all the menus up top there? See the titlebar to move the window and close it etc? Shouldn't the taskbar be up there too?
Look at StarOffice and OpenOffice. They seem familiar. And there are plenty of others, but I think you get the point.
Another thing that M$ gets bashed on here is because they "embrace and extend". Many, many open source projects do exactly this.
Don't get me wrong. I like OS and there are beautiful examples of its success, like Apache, Linux, Galeon/Mozilla. The last one is an excellent example. I never thought of what I would want out of a browser, I just knew they all sucked a few years ago. However, Galeon is exactly what I want out of a browser.
So, what software do I use on a daily basis? Linux for an OS, WindowMaker for a window manager, mutt for email, vim for an editor, and lord forbid a closed source calendar called corporatetime. I believe that Oracle bought this, its difficult to find info about it anymore.
So what is my point? I get along just fine without M$ nor do I use any software that really has a M$ equivalent. Why do these topics come up all the time? Maybe we should be cloning M$'s slogan too. "Where do you want to go today?" It is a fitting question, right now the answer seems to be "Wherever M$ was yesterday?"
That said, Exchange is a bloated, administrative nightmare. ANYTHING else is almost a complete privledge to manage by comparison. Yes, even Notes.
"Let's buy another 500 user licenses for this server!" is a good place to start bitching. I don't want to hear "$9 a user" from anyone ever again! Oh, and another $2 grand for software JUST TO BACKUP!?! This is the most basic and integral function of real server software - not an expensive, after-market opportunity.
Do you have multiple Exchange servers? Are they AD integrated? Do you need to retire the old hardware of the original box? Nightmares never end! The controls for EVERYTHING look identical, and there are eight separate plug-in control panels, each with less than 10% of the needed functionality to perform any moderately complex administrative task. "You are in a maze of twisty, little tree/pane browser widgets, all alike!" Exchange is so deeply, fundamentally flawed from an administrative perspective, that I am caused physical pain, just trying to think where to begin these descriptions! It was bad in 4/5.x, but to "Train Wreck" it's administration into the nightmare-that-never-ends of AD tools...
I'd rather be devoured by the Nameless Horror out of Time.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."