Exchange Alternatives Round-up

richi writes "eWEEK has a review of Linux-based alternatives to MS Exchange: Group Where? Almost Anywhere. Focusing on how well they integrate with Outlook, it looks at Bynari Insight 4.2, CommuniGate Pro 4.2, Gordano 11 and Scalix Server 9.2.1."

Comments

They forgot about ExchangeIt

[SailorFrag]

ExchangeIt is another option.

Disclaimer: I used to work there (but not on that product), and I still think that company is really cool.

Re:They forgot about ExchangeIt

[El Cubano]

ExchangeIt is another option.

Disclaimer: I used to work there (but not on that product), and I still think that company is really cool.

No offense, but their marketing department needs to pull their heads out:

ExchangeIt! is the only groupware product on the market to simultaneously and transparently support the following clients: Microsoft® Outlook®, secure browser-based access over the Internet, and Ximian® Evolution(TM)*.

I highly doubt that in all the world, there is not another groupware solution that doesn't support at least those clients.

Other than that, it is at least worth a look from anyone serious about a non-Exchange solution

Re:They forgot about ExchangeIt

[Anonymous Coward]

Tell the sales dept that some people (like me) are turned off by the lack of pricing information. "Contact us for pricing" is really anoying, as I can't quickly and easilt compare price/features. It also usually indicates (IME) something that is way over priced. I usually won't even bother contacting them, as there are too may other places willing to tell me what it costs.

Re:They forgot about ExchangeIt

[Nimloth]

Any perticular reason when I go to the website and open up the Flash demo to see how it works, it says "Best viewed in fullscreen" inside the non-resizable popup window?

Are they taunting me?

Re:They forgot about ExchangeIt

[Trigun]

from their tech demo, they want to sell me everything. The software, the hardware, the OS, everything.

Sorry but no thanks.

Re:They forgot about ExchangeIt

[balachandran_c]

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

Re:They forgot about ExchangeIt

[Donny Smith]

Poster boy of OSS movement and one of reasons why the industry dislikes working with open source zealots.

Conspiracy, bloated, control, ripoff, proprietary, expensive, DRM, information wants to be free, blah, blah, blah, blah....

Re:They forgot about ExchangeIt

[Trigun]

I do not want a hardware appliance. I want a piece of software that I can implement on the platform of my choice. Why should I have to buy their hardware, run their version of linux, just to use their software? Sorry, but that's not for me. I spend a great deal of time making certain that everything works on my network, I standardize my operating systems, audit them constantly, and I'm not going to go through and put another flavour of linux on my machines and have to create a new policy just to use their server software that I don't know, on their hardware that I don't know, rather than my audited software that I have integrated into my network, on hardware that I spec and purchase?

If that makes me a zealot, then I guess that I'm a zealot. But I'm a zealot that can sleep at night because his network works.

Re:They forgot about ExchangeIt

[Trigun]

They should rename kolab to kobble. Could they throw more disparate software together?

Re:They forgot about ExchangeIt

[interiot]

Yeah, they like to do this in the electronics industry too, it peeves me off. I understand that there are some companies who are in such an exclusive market that deserve and need to have a custom order that's handled by a specific person in the sales department. But come on, this is the internet. Just paying for the salesperson's time to look at your order probably jacks up the price by $50 right away. (besides the other issues mentioned above)

If something costs as much as a Kia (eg. $10,000), THEN a personal sales contact might be warranted. Otherwise, please stop dicking around, and stop assuming that no hobbyist will ever be interested (or that they're interested in taking time to talk to people).

Re:They forgot about ExchangeIt

[glesga_kiss]

Tell the sales dept that some people (like me) are turned off by the lack of pricing information.

Yup, I evaluate expensive software suites now and then, and if you have a "contact us" on the pricing page, it's a negative mark. If I am looking at e.g. 20 different packages, I'll only trial 3 maybe 4 of them. If you have too many negative marks, then you get binned early.

Go ask your HR department how they deal with CV's and job openings. Same process; you have to get the list to a managable size.

Re:They forgot about ExchangeIt

[Frank T. Lofaro Jr.]

They probably will use contacting them to automatically opt you in to their marketing emails, phone calls, etc.

Sorry, I should have said they almost certainly will do so. :)

Re:They forgot about ExchangeIt

[Brushfireb]

Bah -- Kia puts their prices on their websites, just like every other car vendor. Sure, its not a GREAT price, but its still a price.

Not listing your prices online is bad. The reason people are looking at the website is that they dont WANT to call.

Re:They forgot about ExchangeIt

[nil0lab]

...some people (like me) are turned off by the lack of pricing information...

...if you have a "contact us" on the pricing page, it's a negative mark...

...when I go to the website and open up the Flash demo to see how it works, it says "Best viewed in fullscreen" inside the non-resizable popup window?

Two black marks. Next!

Re:They forgot about ExchangeIt

[netdur]

you know! web monkey?

All too big - Hula is a better way to move

[bad_outlook]

Personally I think these solutions only mimic the problems that Exchange had, why not go a different direction? My money is on Hula, the great open source project launched by Novell with 20,000 lines of code from their proven NetMail. New versions of NetMail will be built from Hula's codebase, so it will be used in large companies/implementations. It's come a LONG way since February, and I have it running on FreeBSD currently. If interested, hit the mailing list, and we'll help you out.

Re:All too big - Hula is a better way to move

[Malc]

What are those problems?

Re:All too big - Hula is a better way to move

[Anonymous Coward]

This is nice, but this is not the only web based groupware project. There is phpgroupware, horde and a few others. Unfortunately they all share the same inherent problem of being web based.

Re:All too big - Hula is a better way to move

[bad_outlook]

That it's a proprietary solution, that it uses a hammer to pound a small nail, that it tries to be everything for everybody; just b/c it's the 'standard' doesn't mean it can't be done more effiently.

Re:All too big - Hula is a better way to move

[bad_outlook]

Oh, I completely agree, on my home web/mail server I've used Horde/IMP, squirrelmail, openExchange, and a host of other PHP/IMAP/MYSQL based email solutions; Hula is none of these. It includes it's own web server, mail server, and can even do it's own virus and spam scanning via Spamassasin and Clamav - but all of the Hula backend is written in C (not PHP) and uses it's own database backend, so it's tons faster than any of the PHP based solutions and scales accordingly. In the works are LDAP too, so again, this is a different way of handling an old problem.

Re:All too big - Hula is a better way to move

[Trigun]

This looks really promising, and it'll give me something to play with on my home network.
    Too bad that there isn't an open-source document management system that Novell wants to open-source that integrates with the desktop or openoffice.

Re:All too big - Hula is a better way to move

[agraupe]

Thanks for pointing me in that direction... I'm gonna try playing around with Hula; it sounds very interesting.

Re:All too big - Hula is a better way to move

[sigaar]

What pisses me off of Exchange (2000 at least) is that it cannot do per-recipient routing if the servers it is routing to isn't also exchange. At least not as far as I've been able to find out.

I have a site with severn offices, and only the main branch has Exchange (for calendering and contacts - I intend to change this). The rest of the sites are smaller and all have postfix+courier-pop/imap boxes for their mail.

The main office receives the mail (on a postfix box). This box then distributes the mail to the correct offices and exchange in the case of the main office. So far so good. The problem comes when people in the main branch, using exchange, wants to send mail to the guys in the other branches. Exchange just won't understand that some addresses isn't hosted on itself.

I wish I could find a server tool that would offer shared calenders and contacts to outlook *without* the need for a plug-in.

Re:All too big - Hula is a better way to move

[horza]

Hula is indeed very good. I love the way it's plug and play. I download the tarball and install, then within 5 minutes I have everything configured and working: SMTP, POP3, IMAP, shared calendar. It's got a few bugs, eg trying to send an email via the webmail after a session has expired crashes the whole server, but if we don't use the webmail it's been running solidly for months.

Phillip.

Re:All too big - Hula is a better way to move

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you sure about this? I don't look after our exchange set up but when we moved from GroupWise to Exchange, the Outlook client address book has GroupWise users in it as well as x400 and internet (from different agencies).

Re:All too big - Hula is a better way to move

[sigaar]

It works something like this;

user1@example.com - exchange user
user2@example.com - not exchange user

user2 sends mail to user1. It goes from user2's mail server, to the postfix box on user1's side, to exchange.

Now user1 replies to user2. Exchange sees it's for example.com, thinks, Oh, I am examaple.com, sees there's no local user called user2, and rejects it.

The only way around this I've found so far is subdomains, but it's ugly, really.

Re:All too big - Hula is a better way to move

[Anonymous Coward]

You just need to edit your exchange recipient policy, and in the properties of the @example.com smtp domaine name uncheck the "this exchange organisation is responsible for all mail delivery for this adress" checkbox.

Re:All too big - Hula is a better way to move

[sigaar]

I seem to remember doing that broke something somewhere else, but I'll give it a try next time I'm there.

Thanks

Re:All too big - Hula is a better way to move

[Malc]

Ok, now that you've got that off your chest, how about a list of the technical not political problems?

Re:All too big - Hula is a better way to move

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not easy, but it can be done. Create SMTP recipients with a fake domain name. One domain per destination. Then set up phony DNS records to pony up the correct MXer for each domain that you need. Now you can set up domain aliases on each branch's SMTP server and VOILA.

(Voila is French for "Exchange Sucks")

Re:All too big - Hula is a better way to move

[dtfinch]

For me, the problem is mostly economic. If you only buy the server hardware you need, you'll end up spending 3-5x that in Microsoft licensing costs, for Windows, SQL Server, and Exchange CAL's. While that's still technically affordable, it's very hard to justify, especially if you only need a couple features. We want some sort of groupware, especially shared calendars, and the Exchange solution, aside from the expensive server licensing, will require Outlook to be purchased for each computer and set as the default email client. Shared calendars are fun, but maybe not worth a year's salary.

Re:All too big - Hula is a better way to move

[Malc]

Yes, Exchange+Outlook provide an awful lot of functionality. If you're only using part of it, then it's not so worthwhile. As our company has both grown and become more geographically diverse, we've started using more and more of the features provided. The thing is indispensible. The only other equivalent that I've experienced on this scale is Lotus Notes, which I found abysmal in comparison (a few years back).

Re:All too big - Hula is a better way to move

[Eristone]

It isn't that hard to set this up properly. You just have to fix the accounts of the individuals who aren't hosted on Exchange to be mail-enabled users instead of mailboxes. And for the delivery you should be able to send to user1@host.domain.com (with alternate addressing being user1@domain.com)... It's also easy to configure to say that you aren't the master of the domain and forward all non-local delivery mail to a mailhub system that handles final delivery. Your problem here sounds more configuration issue than exchange won't allow you.

If you want to get off the MS crack

[El Cubano]

It may be a good idea to check out OpenGroupware.org. IIRC, it integrates with Outlook and they are also heavily working on OpenOffice.org and Mozilla integration. This is awesome if you want to transition your backend first. Once you get the back office off of Exchange, you can move the front office to OOo and Mozilla, followed by a switch out of the OS from Windows to Linux or BSD.

Re:If you want to get off the MS crack

[Anonymous Coward]

or checkout OSER - Open Source Exchange Replacement

http://sourceforge.net/projects/oser/

http://www.thewybles.com/oser/help/roadmap/systems .html

Re:If you want to get off the MS crack

[stefanlasiewski]

Is OSER still active? The last release was 18 months ago, and the SF forums haven't had any signifigant activity since 2003.

It seems like the developers might be focusing on OpenChange for the time-being?

Re:If you want to get off the MS crack

[soundvessel]

Once you get the back office off of Exchange, you can move the front office to OOo and Mozilla, followed by a switch out of the OS from Windows to Linux or BSD.

And gosh, that'll be great! All we need now are some non-technical developers who can craft intuitive front-ends to all the open source crap.

Re:If you want to get off the MS crack

[Master of Transhuman]

Apparently. You have to burrow through a few layers of mostly empty Web pages to get to the OpenChange site. This project does not appear to be anywhere near something functional compared to the proprietary items discussed in the article. It also seems to be focused more on extracting Exchange data than replacing its functionality.

Re:If you want to get off the MS crack

[Master of Transhuman]

Pardon me while I laugh.

Microsoft is incapable of producing an "intuitive" front end to any of its products.

Well, Clippy maybe.

Nah, I take that last back - Clippy sucks, too.

There's absolutely NOTHING "intuitive" about ANY computer software except the fact that when you click the mouse on something, something happens (usually...I've seen that fail a lot, too.)

Re:If you want to get off the MS crack

[soundvessel]

Relativity strikes again. Microsoft, at least, attempts to try some new things, even if they stole them. New ways of manipulating your documents, preparing them. OpenOffice seems to just try to play catch up and implement the necessary barebones. Which is great for tech people (and good for some less-than-tech people who just need to get some stuff done).

Re:If you want to get off the MS crack

[Master of Transhuman]

Catch-up?

OpenOffice used an open document format long before Microsoft lamely tried to "embrace and extend" an XML format.

Get serious.

Re:If you want to get off the MS crack

[Dunkirk]

I have to concur here. I've been using it at my church for about 8 months now. We only have about 5 or 6 full-time users, but the shared calendar it has was just what we needed. Parent poster is correct. There's a commercial Outlook plugin, which we also use. (In fact, I sprang for the $350 in order to keep us one step ahead of spending $2,300 it would take to get started with Exchange.)

Note that it doesn't wind up working just like an Exchange shared calendar. Shoot, it doesn't even wind up working like an OpenGroupware shared calendar, but it's functional. If you could convince and train your user-base to stick with the very powerful web frontend of OGo, you could do a lot more with the system than the plugin allows. However, this just wasn't an option with my users.

I run the thing on SuSE 9.2, and it's been solid. The binary packages they produce have gone in like butta'. (I suppose I'm impressed because I started playing with the system when -- I found out later -- it was still really only alpha quality, and there was A LOT of work involved. If you had the same experience, I heartily advise another look.) But the best part of OGo is the email lists. The main man behind the project is extremely active there, and very responsive.

Some of the code they have in the system is very advanced, and will allow you to do all sorts of cool stuff. There's an optional module that allows you to do PalmPilot synchronization. I've had limited success with it, but I wasn't trying very hard. Unfortunately, the main user of the shared calendars (the pastor's wife) has a Pocket PC device. I was able to find the discontinued LookOut product to cheat a little, and get a one-way transfer of the calendar to the Pocket PC device. It's not really pretty, but the next time she thinks about upgrading, I may revisit the whole mess.

To top it off the system can produce .ics files out of the calendars for pulling into a web site. Though I haven't done this for production yet, wget'ing these and using phpicalendar works pretty slick.

In short, I think OGo works great now, and there's a lot more interoperability that can be developed (e.g. an Evolution plugin).

Re:If you want to get off the MS crack

[zootm]

The parent post was referring to the front-end, and he/she was right. Unfortunate though that may be. An open document format isn't much of a draw if the software is significantly behind the leader in terms of usability and features.

Re:If you want to get off the MS crack

[zootm]

There's absolutely NOTHING "intuitive" about ANY computer software except the fact that when you click the mouse on something, something happens (usually...I've seen that fail a lot, too.)

No. There wouldn't be studies into usability if it weren't quantifiable in some way. Computer software can have greater or lesser degrees of ease-of-use and learnability (which is influenced largely by how "intuitive" it is). MS front ends have been consistent with one another and with Windows – in the main, at least – for some time, and that makes them easier to use.

Also, they did add an option to get rid of Clippy. What does that mean? They learned from their mistake. There's a lot of systems that would do well to do the same.

I have many friends who will not use OpenOffice (version 1, at least, but 2 seems to go a way towards remedying this and I'll be back at them about it) because of its poor responsiveness and overall lack of usability compared to the Office suite. Version 2 has helped, but not entirely. But on the whole it's helped by behaving more like Office, which is obviously good for transitioning people, but it hasn't gone far towards providing much more in terms of usability. So either Office is pretty damn perfect, or OOo is just playing usability catchup at the time.

Re:If you want to get off the MS crack

[Anonymous Coward]

ok, then s/Openformat/Stylist/ which make the whole document creation useable in a sane manner

Re:If you want to get off the MS crack

[Master of Transhuman]

Since when is OpenOffice behind the "leader" in usability and features?

Microsoft Office is a bloated POS with excessive features ninety-five percent of users will never use.

OpenOffice has the features ninety-five percent of users need and it is just as usable as any part of Office - even the database part is available if you use a back-end database and the new version will have that covered.

Personally I hope OpenOffice NEVER has ALL the features Office has, or it will likely be a bloated POS too.

Re:If you want to get off the MS crack

[Master of Transhuman]

And AFAIK usability studies routinely denounce most of the software out there - unless they're paid for by Microsoft. I really doubt you're going to find many usability experts who are all that impressed with Microsoft's products OR OSS products or any software out there for that matter - which was my point.

Also, usability studies are only useful if you have an idea how a system SHOULD be used. If all you do is take the standard system layouts and measure them against each other, you get nowhere.

Consistency is valuable, but usability is far more than consistency.

Your conclusion that because OpenOffice is trying to be similar to Office that Office is "perfect" does not follow in the slightest. OpenOffice is trying to minimize transition concerns precisely because Office is a monopoly and the majority of idiots don't want to learn something better (not that Office is necessarily better, but it COULD be better than Office if they tried harder for that and NOT consistency WITH Office.)

Also I never said usability wasn't quantifiable. I said there was nothing about existing software that was "intuitive" - because "intuitiveness" is not a usability issue, it's a marketing buzzword with no meaning.

Re:If you want to get off the MS crack

[zootm]

The usability – except, as I said, with version 2, which seems a lot better – is well-off. The features I'm personally not too fussed about (although the word count being hidden until recent version was extremely annoying).

Active Directory integration?

[charnov]

Without full AD integration it's still kind of pointless. Not to mention the hundreds (thousands?) of programs that need Exchange. The closest I have worked with administratively is Domino and that was an admins nightmare. I run Exchange 2000 servers (again) and I tell ya, other than the dollar cost, these things are great.

Re:Active Directory integration?

[Noaccess0]

That depends on your environment. There are still some companies who run 5.5 (I work at one) because the AD structure is so large and encumbered that duct taping a messaging environment to it would be really bad. Granted some of the new features of E2K3 SP1 are pretty nice (cross admin group movement, etc), it's still an ugly migration path for legacy clients. Let's face it, if your sites and subnets are not designed along MS whitepaper specs, you are going to have issues with routing in E2kX.

Re:Active Directory integration?

[Shakrai]

I run Exchange 2000 servers (again) and I tell ya, other than the dollar cost, these things are great.

Really? Great you say?

Is that why my lousy 30 user network needed a dedicated server with a dedicated Windows 2003 license (cost almost as much as the hardware) for Exchange because it wouldn't be "good practice" to install Exchange on the AD box?

I could replace those two servers with a friggen 486 running Linux with Samba, IMAP and some sort of web based calendaring software. The total software cost on that solution would be zero and the only loss of functionality would be the integration of Outlook.

Fuck Exchange.

Re:Active Directory integration?

[Anonymous Coward]

oh christ. AD is overrated.

as SUN how horrible their life is without AD... oh wait, they do very VERY well without AD as well as everyone else.

Active Directory is not worth the pain.

Re:Active Directory integration?

[EvilTwinSkippy]

Without full AD integration it's still kind of pointless.

It's called LDAP. And we were using it for years before Active Directory...

Oh wait, Active Directory uses LDAP too.

Re:Active Directory integration?

[fodder69]

Huh? What exactly do you mean by "Full" integration?

Besides the fact that the article states that " All the products support Active Directory", what part of AD do you need to support email?

AD can be accessed using LDAP so all the information is there, and CommuniGate for one, can be externally scripted to do anything you want. I set that sucker up to externally route emails to different office servers based on an AD attribute.

And yes, Exchange could do the same thing only a lot more expensively and if anything goes wrong, have fun troubleshooting.

Re:Active Directory integration?

[Anonymous Coward]

A 486 running a mail server and fully integrated web-based calendaring? Get real. Th functionality of a non-integrated calendaring system is a far comparison to the ease of use of Exchange.

Maybe it's not the best solution for your 30 person company but for larger companies it's cheap and scales well.

Re:Active Directory integration?

[vg30e]

I agree that AD integration is important, but as an administrator, I still think Exchange is not the easiest thing in the world to live with. Backups and Restores are still pretty labor intensive without 3d party tools, centralized managed archiving is not possible without expensive 3d party tools as well, which makes leagal compliance tough sometimes.

Re:Active Directory integration?

[Shakrai]

A 486 running a mail server and fully integrated web-based calendaring?

Did I say fully integrated? I don't recall saying that.

My only point (besides venting steam caused by having to administrator Exchange) was that a simple little web-based program could replace all of the calendaring functionality of Exchange. If you got a little bit more fancy you could build it on an SQL backend (mySQL anyone?) and share the appointments/schedules within the entire company.

How does any company besides Microsoft turn a simple a e-mail server and scheduling software into several hundred megabytes of bloat that requires a dedicated machine for a lousy 30 user environment?

Re:Active Directory integration?

[b0bby]

Hmmm, for a 30 user network you could use SBS, which can ONLY have the Exchange server running as the AD master, so you shouldn't need different boxes. A few years back I went that route, we rely on shared calendars in Outlook heavily and when we were forced to move from MS Mail & POP I looked at all the options. At that time, SBS really was the only decent option, much as I wanted to use something Linux based. It's worked out well, though the 16gb limit is a pain. If you've only got 30 or so users you should check into it, though these days there are more/better options.

Re:Active Directory integration?

[ejdmoo]

That's what MS Small Business Server 2003 is for.

AD, Exchange, SQL, etc on 1 box, supported.

Re:Active Directory integration?

[Ucklak]

Domino is a nightmare if you think of admining it as an Exchange Administrator. If you get out of that counter productive Microsoft mindset, it does become easy after a while like anything else.

I've done both and highly skilled from Exchange 5.0 and MsMail before that. Going to another mail store type is a cumbersome task and I thought Domino was the worst product ever. I forced myself to re-learn Domino from the ground up, -not as in Exchange does it this way, how does Domino do the same thing- and it became easy.

Notes configuration sucks but Exchange does too -especially after Office XP- from a user standpoint. Notes does synchronization alot better IMO.

Re:Active Directory integration?

[Kunta Kinte]

Without full AD integration it's still kind of pointless.

Would you care to enlighten us on what "full AD integration" means? Active directory is just an LDAP server user to most applications. That's a trivial feature to implement.

Not to mention the hundreds (thousands?) of programs that need Exchange.

Can you give some examples of applications that most firms would actually need? Also note that many of those applications exist because Exchange is deficient in areas.

The closest I have worked with administratively is Domino and that was an admins nightmare.

Maybe you should have looked around a bit more?

Re:Active Directory integration?

[jpickett]

If your require a dedicated machine for 30 users, to me, that says more about your inability to effectively design and administer an Exchange environment rather than something about Exchange itself. Our environment is relatively small (about 200 users). It runs like a champ on a single server. I think we could easily scale to a few thousand users without breaking a sweat. If managing Exchange in such a simple environment as yours (or mine) is so frustrating, I'm sorry, but you're doing something wrong. The only time I have to touch Exchange is adding new users, removing users (which is actually just done on our DC), and on patch Tuesday. Exchange has a long way to go (particularly with ActiveSync and public folder syncronization), however it's really not a bad product and not nearly as incapable as you make it sound.

Re:Active Directory integration?

[not-real-sure]

I agree I run 3 Exchange 2003 servers and they get on average 200+ days of uptime. The last reboot I had was due to a power loss. These things run like a champ if they are setup on proper hardware.

Re:Active Directory integration?

[Anonymous Coward]

Supports a very small footprint. Not terribly useful for other than a Very small business.

Re:Active Directory integration?

[joshuaobrien]

The closest I have worked with administratively is Domino and that was an admins nightmare.

Yeah, that's pretty close to Exchange.

Re:Active Directory integration?

[operagost]

30 users constitutes a "very small business."

Re:Active Directory integration?

[Anonymous Coward]

>>is that why my lousy 30 user network needed a dedicated server with a dedicated Windows 2003 license

I DOESN'T! YOU FUCKING CLOWN!

I wish I knew your boss then I could hint that he should fire your sorry, ignorant ass!

You don't know what you're doing and costin your employer money.

Please resign NOW! (and pay back your last 3 months salary - with interest).

Re:Active Directory integration?

[sigaar]

So is store.exe eating up a gig and a half of memory for an 8 user network also just a configuration problem, or is that one of those legendary MS "features"?

Re:Active Directory integration?

[o517375]

You MUST be a paid M$ hack posting absurdly ridiculous anti-M$ stuff. Do you really think a 486 can serve 30 users on a 486? I'm a 100% Linux admin and I would never contemplate such a thing for a minute.

Re:Active Directory integration?

[pboulang]

I run many MSEXCH servers and for the most part they are barely a blip on the radar. Simple to manage day to day. However, my complaint is when it does break, it breaks HARD.

"Best Practice" from MS says to bring it down once a week and defrag the database. This, of course, brings us to the WORST part of Exchange: JET DB backend. When there are JET errors in your MDB, it takes freaking FOREVER to repair. I'm talking a GB per hour, and in a corporate environment where it is not unusual to have a GB pre person, that is insane.

AD integration gained nothing (exchange 2000+ versus 5.5). In fact, I can't easily associate old/multiple mailboxes with user accounts.

SQL is a much better choice than Jet.. why don't they use it?

The repair tools are so infrquently used, but when they are, a type or put in the wrong order can be catastophic. They clearly should have a GUI front end.

Re:Active Directory integration?

[Master of Transhuman]

Oh, wonderful.

The geniuses at Microsoft are using the utterly fragile Access database engine to run Exchange instead of SQL Server?

Access corrupts if you breath on it.

And some idiot is telling us Exchange is "stable"?

I doubt that very much, based on a simple Google search for "Microsoft Exchange problem" which returns over 5 million hits.

First client I had when starting my tech support business had problems with Outlook and Exchange double-delivering mail.

And the repair tools are command line? Wow - and Linux is just SO BAD for using command line...NOT.

People need to realize that ANY data in a binary format is going to be lost unless you can export it in text format and back it up. Text is the ONLY safe format for backing up structured data (not talking about images or media, of course.)

Had a potential client a couple weeks ago I couldn't do anything for because his Outlook PST file was corrupted and he couldn't get his contacts out. I found a tool on the Web that claimed to be able to recover contacts (most only claim to recover email), but it costs $300 and there's no guarantee it will work.

So anybody who relies on Windows OR OSS databases are in trouble if they don't export to text and back it up, because sooner or later irreversible corruption WILL occur - and the tools to fix it either don't exist or can't do the job or cost a fortune. Whereas any text data can be re-imported or otherwise massaged and restored because it is human readable.

Re:Active Directory integration?

[vginders]

Exchange 2K3 SP? (the latest who is to come) will grant you a limit of 75MB.

Re:Active Directory integration?

[ocbwilg]

I could replace those two servers with a friggen 486 running Linux with Samba, IMAP and some sort of web based calendaring software. The total software cost on that solution would be zero and the only loss of functionality would be the integration of Outlook.

If you could have, I'm sure that you would have, yet you didn't.

BTW, there's nothing wrong with having Exchange running on an AD box. There are a limited number of potential complications with installing Exchange 2000 and later on a domain controller, but all of them apply to much larger networks. You could have saved yourself a fortune by just going with a single server and MS Small Business Server suite.

If I were to give an honest assesment of what information you provided in your post, it sounds like you didn't know the products, their capabilities, or how to best leverage them. Salespeople love it when someone like that comes to them because they can sell them an extra server and more software licenses without even trying. I have noticed that this is a common problem with people who blast MS products...typically they either don't know/use them or haven't used them since the days of Windows 95. Don't get me wrong, I like the idea of free (speech) software, and especially free (beer) software. But if you actually know how to use Microsoft software (as opposed to trying to pass yourself off as an MS Systems Admin) then you will have relatively few problems.

Re:Active Directory integration?

[dtfinch]

Access corrupts if you breath on it.

Usually only if two breath on it at the same time.

Re:Active Directory integration?

[sumdumass]

AD integration is usualy little more then extended mapi calls from the program. While there are thousands of extended mapi calls, your product only needs to support what the product your wanting to use needs.

I have paid developers to fix Exchanges only items by adding this support and get some other products working. Sure it is a hassle but it isn't dificult.

Re:Active Directory integration?

[rodgster]

Was the pst larger than 2 gb? If so use the pst trimmer from MS. The try the pst repair tool. I'd use a copy of the pst and keep the original. Perhaps you already did this?

Re:Active Directory integration?

[Shakrai]

If you could have, I'm sure that you would have, yet you didn't.

It wasn't an option -- because this is the clusterfuck of a design that I inherited.

BTW, there's nothing wrong with having Exchange running on an AD box

Actually there are a number of problems both big and small. The biggest small one that comes to mind are the problems shutting down/rebooting (AD dies before Exchange -- so Exchange hangs for quite awhile until it times out -- unless you manually kill Exchange).

I have noticed that this is a common problem with people who blast MS products...typically they either don't know/use them or haven't used them since the days of Windows 95. Don't get me wrong, I like the idea of free (speech) software, and especially free (beer) software. But if you actually know how to use Microsoft software (as opposed to trying to pass yourself off as an MS Systems Admin) then you will have relatively few problems.

Relatively few problems? I'll grant you my background is/was originally Unix administration but I've been running Microsoft networks since NT 4.0 and it has been my experience that unless you fit their cookie-cutter image of how a business should use computers then you probably won't get the best mileage out of their products. It's been a really big pain in the ass in the smaller environments that I've worked in/consulted for.

Re:Active Directory integration?

[Shakrai]

You MUST be a paid M$ hack posting absurdly ridiculous anti-M$ stuff. Do you really think a 486 can serve 30 users on a 486? I'm a 100% Linux admin and I would never contemplate such a thing for a minute.

Don't draw conclusions about me when you don't know my setup or requirements.

I wouldn't contemplate it either but I would maintain that it would work quite well. I ran a local/semi-regional dial-up and fixed wireless ISP with ~5,000 users. When I came onboard every single one of our servers except the main web server and the mail server were P1-133 boxes running BSDI. Granted there was an individual server for radiusd and accounting, an individual one for https, an individual one for DNS, etc etc. But they worked just fine. The only reason we even bothered to replace them was because we couldn't get replacement parts.

Are you seriously telling me that a beefed up 486/DX with a decent amount of RAM (128) and a good RAID array couldn't handle the above requirements? For 30 users using Samba to save/share Office documents and IMAP for e-mail? It would be far from ideal and quite stupid given the cheap cost of even server-grade hardware but I maintain that it would work just fine.

Though I'll grant you that my point probably should have been that with the servers I could have built just using the money we spent on licenses for Microsoft software I could probably have supported a couple thousand users.

Re:Active Directory integration?

[Master of Transhuman]

I can't remember if they tried that. I found out about that problem later when I was researching for repair tools. They may have tried the Microsoft tool, I can't remember.

Most of the repair tools offered on the Net seem to claim to retrieve emails only, not contacts, and as opposed to repairing the entire pst file.

It's insane to store contacts and email in the same file, in my opinion. Contacts are usually a permanent store, emails come and go, the retention rules are going to be different, and the data structures are going to be different. And adding scheduling? Makes no sense from a system design standpoint, unless your sole goal is to make the whole thing so proprietary that nobody else can access it - which is probably why most of the commercial tools cost $300 and there are almost no freeware tools to deal with these problems.

As a tech support person, I can't afford to spend $300 each for fifty different tools to fix fifty different applications, and I can't recommend to a client that they do so - with no guarantee of success - unless their data - or the data re-entry effort - is definitely worth more than that.

My advice to clients is: verify it, then back it up - twice - and then dump it to text format and back it up again and put that copy offsite in a safe deposit box. Then you KNOW you can always recover the data.

Re:Active Directory integration?

[jpickett]

Given our store.exe is using 672,868 K of RAM supporting almost 20 times the number of users you indicate, I'd venture a guess it's an sys admin problem yes. But maybe that's just me.

So...

[utopianfiat]

What exactly does MS Exchange *do*? I have that issue with a lot of Microsoft products. "So, what exactly does Dr. Watson *do*?" "So, what exactly does MS Publisher *do*?" "So, what exactly does MS Access *do*?" (And I programmed for it!)

Re:So...

[AKAImBatman]

Actually, I would like to know what MS Exchange *does* besides integrate with a calendar across a domain. Besides the Calendar functionality, what do you find are important features of MS Exchange? How are these features not met by other options on the market?

Re:So...

[Red Flayer]

From MS website:

Exchange Server, the Microsoft messaging and collaboration server, is software that runs on servers that enables you to send and receive electronic mail and other forms of interactive communication through computer networks. Designed to interoperate with a software client application such as Microsoft Outlook, Exchange Server also interoperates with Outlook Express and other e-mail client applications.

From wikipedia:

Microsoft now appears to be positioning a combination of Microsoft Office, Live Meeting and Sharepoint as its collaboration software of choice. Exchange is now to be simply email and calendaring.

MS prefers its clients to have to license separate software for these tasks, this allows both greater specialization and multiple revenue streams.

Re:So...

[AKAImBatman]

Yes, but that doesn't answer the question. How does Exchange better serve the needs of companies than competing products? Is the integrated calendar the only "killer feature", or is there far more functionality that users would miss if they converted?

Re:So...

[utopianfiat]

Translation:
Exchange server, the Microsoft email server, is an email server. It is designed to work with email clients such as our email client; It also works with our other email client and other people's email clients!

Re:So...

[Red Flayer]

The point I am making is that MS is positioning Exchange to be solely for email and calendaring.

Most other features (including collaboration, perhaps the most useful in the modern office) are being migrated or developed for other MS apps.

The only reason I can see to prefer Exchange over competitors would be increased interoperability with other MS products.

Re:So...

[AKAImBatman]

Gotcha. So the answer is, "[Companies] use it because it's Microsoft(TM)." :-)

Re:So...

[ckaminski]

For 99% of the users out there, Exchange is simply an integrated calendar. Fairly useless, highly expensive and simply overkill.

For the other 1% who leverage Outlook's VBA capabilities, it's actually a fairly power collaboration platform where I can build applications and work with my coworkers or other audiences to manage my tasks. I've built customer support systems, CRM tools and countless other custom one-off applications on the Outlook/Exchange platform.

And Exchange 2000 has brought even greater flexibility with the Exchange event model that lets me add server-side logic into the mix.

It's no better than web based apps, for sure. But for people standardizing their business around Outlook, it's no worse.

Re:So...

[Master of Transhuman]

"It's no better than web based apps, for sure. But for people standardizing their business around Outlook, it's no worse."

Until, of course, that inevitable day in the future when it's no longer supported because Microsoft is either out of business or decides to change its software and stop supporting the old stuff.

Then the company goes through hell migrating to something else.

Standardizing around a proprietary product is the sure route to eventual disaster. How many times does the IT industry need to have their noses rubbed in this?

The legal industry is still standardized around WordPerfect for the most part. Fortunately for them, WordPerfect still exists - barely.

While ANY technology will be replaced eventually - including OSS ones - designing your systems to be replaceable (i.e., the data is easily extracted and reformatted and adheres to standards) is the only way to go. It will never be perfect and migration will always be a pain, but there are easier ways and there are harder ways.

Burying one's data in a proprietary product is not one of the easy ways.

Is Outlook really the killer app?

[Noaccess0]

I'm still surprised that no-one has come out with a more popular groupware client than Outlook. This is an area that is starving for new innovation. The features built into exchange really haven't changed much in the last ten years - why can't someone make something better?

Re:Is Outlook really the killer app?

[generic-man]

Evolution is the best groupware client I've used in Linux, but its interface (especially in version 1) is a clear derivative from Outlook.*

Mozilla's working on Sunbird and they could potentially do something nice with Thunderbird+Sunbird, but everything's proceeding at a Mozilla-like pace so far. Version 0.2, the last I tried, was all function and no form.

* BZZT OBSCURE PROGRAM I LIKED 20 YEARS AGO HAD SOMETHING THAT OUTLOOK STOLE WHY WON'T ANYONE GIVE PROPS TO MY FAVORITE OLD PROGRAM WRONG!

Re:Is Outlook really the killer app?

[ckaminski]

Every office I've been in could replace Word, Excel and Access with any other 3rd party application, Lotus, Corel, Borland, etc.

Name me one Windows based groupware app that you could replace Outlook with. Evolution doesn't count since it doesn't run on Windows, and is a BLATANT copy of Outlook.

Re:Is Outlook really the killer app?

[jtosburn]

Name me one Windows based groupware app that you could replace Outlook with. Evolution doesn't count since it doesn't run on Windows, and is a BLATANT copy of Outlook.

Exchange wasn't the first. Lotus Notes was. Exchange has caught up to Notes in market share, but hasn't been able to surpass it. Then there's Novell Groupwise as a distant third. And the other that I know of is Oracle's Collaboration Suite, formerly Steltor's Corporate Time.

Re:Is Outlook really the killer app?

[Dogers]

Lotus Notes client is horrid.
Groupwise client isnt much better.

Neither can be bought seperately, and afaik, both only support the companies own server.. Outlook will support IMAP, POP3 and SMTP, so can stand on its own nicely.

Re:Is Outlook really the killer app?

[obdulio]

Name me one Windows based groupware app that you could replace Outlook with

Lotus Notes?

Re:Is Outlook really the killer app?

[Anonymous Coward]

Name me one Windows based groupware app that you could replace Outlook with.

Groupwise? It may even have a grammar checker...

Re:Is Outlook really the killer app?

[jtosburn]

Parent was claiming that no others Windows solutions existed. That was flase. No claims to quality were made. That said, both Notes and Groupwise attempt to do more than Outlook. And when was the last time you looked at either? AFAICT they both support imap, pop3, and smtp for mail operations. All other operations are totally proprietary, but then MS is no different. Actually, MS is worse since their imap support sucks rocks. Finally, I don't think that the Groupwise client is so bad. Can't really speak for Notes, though.

Re:Is Outlook really the killer app?

[hb253]

GroupWise server agents can run on Netware, Linux, and Windows. It has native clients for Windows, Mac OSX and Linux.

Re:Is Outlook really the killer app?

[4of12]

Evolution doesn't count since it doesn't run on Windows, and is a BLATANT copy of Outlook.

• Evidently, the developers have built Evolution for Windows, though they warn off would be beta-testers.
• To entice Outlook users to make a switch to Evolution, wouldn't BLATANCY in resembling Outlook be a Good Thing? I despise MS business practices as much as anyone, but much of Outlook's design is good, just as piling together admittedly existing technologies (SQL, SMTP, etc) to create Exchange made a product that is actually useful.

P.S. My SO can figure out how to use Oo.o better than I can on our home Linux box because her 8 years of experience with MS Word trumps my two decades of UNIX command line wizardry.

Re:Is Outlook really the killer app?

[ckaminski]

Although I love Evolution dearly, and don't really care that it copies Outlook so closely, I wanted to preempt everyone from trying to use it as an argument.

Re:Is Outlook really the killer app?

[ckaminski]

I never said Exchange was the first. I know that to be false, I was using Notes long before Exchange was even a blip on Microsoft's radar. I will confess that it's been a good five or six years since I've used notes, but in the short span between Exchange 4 (1996?) and 1998, Outlook surpassed Notes in usability, and almost equalled it in extensibility in terms of app development.

Corporate Time is a POS in comparison. Well, I guess if I lower my standards a bit in terms of polish and usability (not just cute wysiwyg crap), it's equivalent. Let me ask a serious question tho, can the Notes client run standalone? I don't remember it being able to do so, but I could be wrong.

Would Exchange have achieved the penetration it did if Outlook wasn't bundled with Office? I don't know. Outlook was available as a free download for all of 1997, 1998 and as recently as 2000. And that's why I use it. It stands alone, doesn't require some backend groupware. In some respects, Mozilla is coming close in terms of a straight PIM.

I just don't think any of the alternatives (especially the ones I've tried, CT, Notes(long ago, granted) have anywhere near the polish and ease of use.

But that wasn't my argument, I guess.

IBM fails once again

[dsginter]

You'd think that with IBM being the biggest OSS cheerleader that they'd port Lotus Notes. One might think that their support is just a big ad campaign.

Re:IBM fails once again

[utopianfiat]

Again, what exactly does Lotus Notes or MS Exchange *do*?

Re:IBM fails once again

[Anonymous Coward]

They have. Take a look at the upcoming release announcements and you'll see that the Notes plug-in for IBM's Workplace Managed Client provides full Notes client access on Linux.

Re:IBM fails once again

[Anonymous Coward]

Quite a lot. E-mail handling, scheduling/calendar support, a whole lot of features. You could have just looked it up on Google of course, but being that you're a troll I suppose you were looking for a response. Glad I could help.

Re:IBM fails once again

[Itchy Rich]

...port Lotus Notes.

Why is this not modded funny?

Re:IBM fails once again

[wiggles]

My college Senior Project was a Linux-based Domino server implementation. Worked great for me.

Click here to download a trial of Lotus Domino for Linux. Click here for a Notes client for Windows (works on Wine) and Mac.

Re:IBM fails once again

[Anonymous Coward]

If you haven't looked on how the kernel comes along...
Look at the number of people taking part of the kernel development and then decide if they stand behind the OSS Community.
You can find it in MAINTAINERS file in the kernel sources. Search for ibm and you'll see all those with registered e-mail addresses with ibm.com

Not to say that their Power+ server lines are living on Linux atm either.

Where exactly is that "ad campaign" you see?

Re:IBM fails once again

[Anonymous Coward]

It's being replaced with Lotus Workplace instead.

Re:IBM fails once again

[Pxtl]

Have you looked at the posts? Everyone just says "email, a really, really good calendar, and a bunch of acronyms that I wont care to explain".

You did even less. Wikipedia does less. It sounds like Active Directory is good for providing a company phonebook, but that doesn't sound like that big a deal.

So can someone actually explain - besides calendar, address book, and email - what does it do? Yes, I realise that it allows some nice conflict-resolution and organisation on those fronts, but still... what the hell are these other "features" that people ambiguously describe with buzzwords and acronyms - don't say "collaboration", "groupware", or "XPQF" or "messaging". What do you _use_ it for?

Re:IBM fails once again

[51mon]

I thought IBM was supporting Linux just fine by NOT porting Lotus Notes to it.

The HP-UX Notes client was the only program I ever needed to reboot a Unix workstation to fix a problem with!

Re:IBM fails once again

[Martin Blank]

Notes is good for ensuring employment in the server clustering industry, and boosting pay of people willing to commit their lives to learn to administer one of the more infuriating applications available today.

Re:IBM fails once again

[Anonymous Coward]

There're doing it. I refer you to:

http://edbrill.com/ebrill/edbrill.nsf/dx/hannover- ---announcing-the-next-post-7.0-version-of-lotus-n otes?opendocument&comments

Re:IBM fails once again

[generic-man]

Exchange is a whole application platform at the moment. You can hook many pieces of software into it. I won't bore you with buzzwords like "CRM" and "ERP" -- you can Google for those.

When people ask you what "Linux" -- not "GNU/Linux" or "Red Hat Linux" -- does, what do you tell them? Do you ambiguously describe the kernel with buzzwords like "module-based architecture" or do you say boring application-specific shit like "it runs my web server"?

Re:IBM fails once again

[Blakey Rat]

It does email, using the WORST user interface known to man. It does calendaring, but doesn't talk to anything outside of itself and allows nonsense entries, like meetings that start at 4:00 PM and end at 2:00 PM on the same day. You can also write really crappy database applications on it, which all have terrible interfaces because Notes doesn't provide the tools needed to create an even decent, much less good, interface.

In short, corporate types love it because it's buzzword compliant. Users *HATE* it with a passion because it's has a mutant interface from mars where the easiest tasks to do in other programs become ridiculously hard in Notes. Administrators are somewhat neutral, since it's about the same difficulty to admin as Exchange.

(For a bad UI example, listboxes don't let you sort by all fields if you click on them. You can sort email by user, date, etc, but you can't sort by subjectline... for no apparent reason. In some views, the scrollwheel on your mouse works fast, in some views it works slow, in others it doesn't work at all. To attach a file to a message, you have to first click on the body of the message, otherwise the attach button is greyed out. The address book presents you with two listboxes, one of names in the addy book and one of names in the email, but doesn't allow you to drag-and-drop between them. etc, etc. In short, the interface sucks... it's version 6.5.1 right now, and it still has MANY bugs that were present in version 4.5, when I started using it.

Re:IBM fails once again

[hey!]

Well, I've never done this with Exchange mind you, but one of the things people used to use Notes for was document routing: send this document to Alice edits and Bob for comments; once they've done their bit, send it to Carol for approval, unless she's on vacation in which Dan can sign off on it.

That kind of thing.

There are entire industries, the bulk of the actiity within which is moving documents around so various worker bees can deposit or extract bits of pollen from them. Facilitating this proces -- that's what groupware does. MS has a lock on this, not because Exchange is so wonderful, but because they own the Office, and for practical purposes nobody can tie Office to Exhange as well as MS can.

Re:IBM fails once again

[Anonymous Coward]

I work for an IBM Business Partner, and am thinking the same thing : even for products that do get ports, the quality of the ports and support thereof is lackluster.

Re:IBM fails once again

[AK Marc]

What do you _use_ it for?

Email. It stores all emails on the server. Identical copies are stored once, so the dumbass that sends the 100MB file to the entire company of 500 people takes just 100MB of server space, not 50GB of space. It allows multiple people to log into the same email box with different permissions set in the box and every individual folder in it. You want a personal folder in your email, but your secretary/boss needs to see everything else? No problem, it's easy. And, it can be configured by the admin if the user is too stupid, or the user can control all that themselves if they wish. It also does pretty much everything else that all other email servers do, but these are a few (and just a few) of the features that are uncommon (if available at all) in other programs.

You can make forms. These are special email templates that use Office format and are linked to an email chain. Do you have a specific manner in which you order things? Have the form get forwarded to the boss, who approves it, then sends it to the purchasing dept that orders it, then it goes to finance for coding and payment. It gets forwarded automatically to the next people when you are done with it. The rules are more flexible that I've seen. You can set up rules executed on the server through the client. Some rules will be on the client, others on the server, and it works seamlessly.

The shared calendar features are loved by some. They like the ability to see other people's calendars. Or, if you want, you can have the time marked as busy without letting anyone know what you are doing. You can check other's and send them requests that auto-fill. You can set up locations and have them coordinated from a location list for the office (small conference room, big conference room).

Even before "active directory" became the buzz word, the contact list could include the whole company and have lots of information about each person. It was searchable in multiple ways. You would also have a personal address list. It later became "contacts" which was much the same, but stored on the server, like the email is. This allowed more flexibility in sharing contact lists and such.

One of the reasons that many people here won't get it is that they don't work in businesses. If you stay home alone, or just keep computers/servers working, who cares what you can share with your neighbor. Just download your email locally, and you can do whatever you want with it. However, with most businesses, the secretary needs to be able to act as if she is her boss. And bosses need to be able to see what their people are doing. And having all the email and such in one central place with everyone able to access their and other's information they have a reason to access, it makes it much easier than having to manually coordinate.

None of them are solutions

[DogDude]

How can any of these be considered a viablealternative if "None of the products provides full Outlook-to-Exchange feature fidelity in Outlook"?

My *real* alternative to an expensive Exchange server in house is: hosted Exchange. It's *much* cheaper for small businesses, and there's no need to sacrifice any functionality.

Re:None of them are solutions

[EvilTwinSkippy]

Our organization has been running for several years with a web-based calendar and contact list system. One thing we have going for us is that nobody in upper management has ever worked with Outlook, and the few that have not been able to name a capability in Outlook that doesn't work with our system. (They complain because they have to do it in a browser instead of having it all come up through the Email client.)

We migrated the stafflist to LDAP, so the argument about the staff list not showing up when composing emails has been vanquished as well.

I think what people need to realize is that contact and scheduling systems are an amalgam of several networking protocols. With a pretty front end. I keep forgetting the pretty front end. In any case, and fool with enough time on his hands and a DB backend could build his own.

Re:None of them are solutions

[fodder69]

Basically the feature that they don't support is Outlook Forms. Have you used those lately? Puts you in a very small minority if you said yes.

Re:None of them are solutions

[fastduke]

Because most people run Exchange for the group calendar.

Re:None of them are solutions

[DogDude]

I think what people need to realize is that contact and scheduling systems are an amalgam of several networking protocols. With a pretty front end. I keep forgetting the pretty front end.

You're right. But the end user doesn't care if it's a mish-mash of protocols, or an army of hamsters running it. As long as it works the way they want it to work is all that matters. And the front end is what users see and actually interface with. I don't care if the server has full artifical intelligence and can predict what you will want 5 minutes before you want it... without a good user interface that people want to use, it's all pretty pointless. I personally like the functionality of Outlook quite a bit, but it's also nice having the web interface for when you're out of the office.

Re:None of them are solutions

[Kunta Kinte]

How can any of these be considered a viablealternative if "None of the products provides full Outlook-to-Exchange feature fidelity in Outlook"?

I think its funny that you do not know what features the alternatives lack, but you see those features as manatory for a viable alternative .

Microsoft takes, the communication protocol of the day and dumps it in Exchange, and writes the client side support into Outlook.

IM, VOIP, CRM, ERP, you-name-it, MS as Exchange/Outlook support for it.

The vast majority of small firms won't need those features. Many just what to send/recieve email and share calendars internally.

Re:None of them are solutions

[bogie]

I'm sorry but that's just a retarded thing to say. Or more precisely that's an unrealistic look at how people compare products. You see that's not the way the world works. You see what your firm ACTUALLY needs and then buy based on that. You don't say well since it doesn't have EVERY SINGLE feature the other product has its not viable. You say, well we need X features and can spend X amount. If a competing product has the features you use that it IS a viable alternative.

Re:None of them are solutions

[justforaday]

(They complain because they have to do it in a browser instead of having it all come up through the Email client.)

Stick an extra copy of firefox on their machine, give it a nice calendary icon, set the homepage to the calendar page, disable all the menubars, change the executable name, change the titlebar with firesomething, and tell everyone it's their new calendaring app. Sure, it's still separate from their email client, but I bet most people wouldn't be able to tell that it's running in a browser...

Re:None of them are solutions

[swb]

Hosted Exchange suffers from the problem of attachments. One of their few virtues is that attachments are sent non-interactively; you don't waste time downloading them.

If your Exchange setup is hosted, you end up having to pull everything from the WAN, which is tedious for larger attachments unless you have 3Mbit or larger pipe and your hosting provider is topologically close to your ISP.

If you never use them, it's probably a pretty good deal and a lot less headache than in-house Exchange.

Re:None of them are solutions

[widderslainte]

The problem we've run into (with implementing that sort of solution) is supporting synching to the myriad of PDA devices our employees use.

Re:None of them are solutions

[erlenic]

I can actually say yes to that. That said, any replacement that can't do forms gets extra credit in my book. Every form we have is incredibly buggy, and a pain in the ass to fix. I'd love an excuse to replace them. It's not like any of them can't be recreated in ten minutes on our intranet with PHP.

Re:None of them are solutions

[forkazoo]

I was just about to reply to the grand parent with the same comment. We use Groupwise, and have no problems with synching, but a lot of alternatives would make easy synching... less easy.

Another nice thing about groupwise is the ability to email an appointment. Really just a UI convenience, rather than an actual feature, but it means that the users don't have to draw any distinction between appointments and email, which saves some hassle.

Re:None of them are solutions

[nmos]

The problem we've run into (with implementing that sort of solution) is supporting synching to the myriad of PDA devices our employees use.

I realize this wouldn't work for everyone but personally I use a web based solution (PHPGroupware) even on my pda. Not having to worry about syncing at all no matter where I happen to be or who's computer I'm sitting at is handy.

Re:None of them are solutions

[nmos]

How can any of these be considered a viablealternative if "None of the products provides full Outlook-to-Exchange feature fidelity in Outlook"?

Many/most people don't actually use (or even understand) many of Exchange's features. For those that do then sure, stay with Exchange.

Re:None of them are solutions

[PCMeister]

While it's great that OSS groupware apps are maturing at a steady pace, I don't think there's enough focus on a given project to ultimately give Exchange a run for it's Money (pun intended.) Keep in mind that corporations of any size need to have confidence that there is a support team waiting in the wings incase their mail server throws a fit.

Comments that belittle other OSS projects only serve to give big companies more FUD ammunition. Quite frankly, I hope that a group of coders out there will band together and take the best and most stable features from the lot of OSS groupware projects out there, test it and release it.

IMHO, the goal at first should be to target the SMB (small-to-medium business) market. Converting a good chunk of this market would certainly raise some eyebrows. Down the line, it will help in converting bigger corporations as there would be a track record of solid performance from real companies and not some benchmarks simulating a production environment. Try to make it scalable and modular, so SMB's could install a simple setup of mail+calendar+webclient(?), while larger corporations could add modules as needed. Make sure to include a solid implementation of crypto, by way of GnuPG/OpenSSL/etc.

And finally... collaborate with other projects to roll a LiveCD of your favorite server distro that will include a pre-configured mail+calendar+webclient(?) installation. Demo the hell out of it and distribute professional quality CD's at Linux expos and the like.

That's just my two cents of course...

The penguin will have the last laugh!

Re:None of them are solutions

[richi]

Scalix is probably the most fully-featured. As far as I know, the only feature it's "missing" is Outlook forms, which has been deprecated by Microsoft for a very long time.

MAPI?

[Anonymous Coward]

Do any of these substitute email servers support MS's proprietary MAPI protocol as a fully-implemented workalike? Of course not! Well then, they will never substitute for a real MS Exchange server. MS has seen to that, in that using Outlook as a POP/IMAP client is only a half-assed solution. You might as well just save your money and deploy Thunderbird for free and run it against a free Linux IMAP/POP open source server.

Re:MAPI?

[AKAImBatman]

Do any of these substitute email servers support MS's proprietary MAPI protocol as a fully-implemented workalike?

RTFA:

None of the products provides full Outlook-to-Exchange feature fidelity in Outlook, but they all hit the basics of group calendar and scheduling, shared folders, and e-mail. The feature that companies are likely to miss most when using the servers we tested with Outlook is forms. Administrators also have the additional overhead of deploying a MAPI (Messaging API) connector to each client. With the exception of Bynari, all the vendors support remote packaged distribution of their connectors. With the Bynari offering, administrators will need to perform a few additional tasks to ensure that the connector installs with user- specific settings.

The problem with MAPI has been less an issue of reverse engineering a protocol, and more an issue of trying to replicate the DCOM interface. Microsoft piled on the technology stacks in making MAPI, thus confounding attempts to create a compatible connector. It was only a year or two ago that Ximian finally figured it out.

Re:MAPI?

[Anonymous Coward]

Er, no.

Ximian goes in through the Microsoft approved back door known as OWA. Microsoft could give a rat's ass about you using OWA because you've already bought Exchange (and Win2k/Win2k3 Server) and a CAL for whatever client you're using, whether it's Outlook or Evolution.

Re:MAPI?

[fodder69]

Yes, they do. I know it's pointless to say RTFA to Slashdot readers (and it doesn't go into a lot of detail), but the CommuniGate piece at least is an Outlook plugin that gives MAPI functionality on the client side and uses IMAP/ssl on the other side to connect to the server. So Outlook behaves like you would expect a MAPI client to.

The rest of your comment would make sense if you didn't start out being so willfully clueless.

Re:MAPI?

[Kunta Kinte]

It was only a year or two ago that Ximian finally figured it out.

Ximian hasn't figured out the MAPI, they use WebDAV as their line protocol, I suspect. Could be wrong. Exchange supports WebDAV access.

Trying to reverse MAPI line protocol is insane. What you want to do is write a client-side connector, like all the vendors in the article. I'm working on one at openconnector.org

MAPI, btw, is a semi-documented standard. There are at least two books on it. But still, MS keeps tweaking it and doesn't release the changes, so we have to go back and reverse engineer those changes. In all its just a lot of coding, rather and reverse engineering.

Re:MAPI?

[n0-0p]

Evolution uses the Outlook Web Access over WebDAV interface. This is far simpler than trying to create a compatible MAPI stack because (as you pointed out) there are a number of complex layered protocols required. To my knowledge, only MS has ever made a complete MAPI stack. Everything else uses either MAPI client connectors on Windows or OWA WebDAV to talk to the server from a non-Windows client.

Re:MAPI?

[AKAImBatman]

Hmm... I didn't realize that MAPI was not actually reversed by Ximian. Points off them for taking the easy way out. :-/

Question: Is Brutus a full MAPI implementation? OMESC claims it is, but I'm not certain if they're referring to the API or Protocol. (My feeling is that they mean the API.)

Re:MAPI?

[Evil Grinn]

Do any of these substitute email servers support MS's proprietary MAPI protocol as a fully-implemented workalike? Of course not!

MAPI and the Exchange protocol are two different things. MAPI is an API, a set of functions, for programs that run on Windows to do mail-related stuff. It is also an abstraction, that hides the actual over-the-wire protocol used to talk to Exchange. Third party vendors implement the MAPI interface so that Outlook (and other MAPI clients, if there are any?) can use it. The actual protocol used for talking to their servers is completely different from what Exchange uses.

Re:MAPI?

[richi]

Yes and no. Most of these use a bizarre "connector" that sits on the sidelines and syncs with an Outlook PST (personal store). Very fragile architecture.

Scalix for one uses a "true" MAPI service provider, which essentially makes Outlook think it's talking to an Exchange box.

I know too much about this stuff, 'cos I used to work on HP OpenMail for like 13 years...

Re:MAPI?

[colding]

We do mean the API. Brutus does a wrapping of extended MAPI into correcponding CORBA methods. Not easy but doable.

Re:MAPI?

[AKAImBatman]

I had a feeling. Thanks for confirming that for me! :-)

GroupWise?

[j-tull]

I'm surprised that the article neglected to mention Novel's GroupWise. Most of your leading anti-Microsoft shops tend to be very pro Novel, and GroupWise is still very much alive and kicking (with version 7 just released yesterday). It supports e-mail, instant messaging, appointments, Microsoft Outlook, and it even comes with a license of SUSE Linux Enterprise Server.

Re:GroupWise?

[Anonymous Coward]

We used to run GroupWise5 in the office. Personally, I like the front-end better than Outlook since the GUI is a lot cleaner. IMNHO Outlook has the common failing of too many options being on-screen at once.

Re:GroupWise?

[Anonymous Coward]

We use GroupWise at work, a company with 5000 people (http://mbakercorp.com./ Let me tell you from a user perspective; GroupWise sucks big time! I use GroupWise 6.5 at work & it is veerryy buggy. Slow as hell & randomy hangs up. No, it is nothing to do with my machine. A friend in the IT dept at our company told me that it is the #1 in complaints form users & #2 in maintenace trouble.

However much as I hate M$ (I run Ubuntu on my home desktop & Suse on laptop). Exchange is a very well thought out product out there.

Re:GroupWise?

[QuantumRiff]

Oracle Collaboration suite is pretty cool too, works with outlook, IM client, calendaring, document management, etc..

Re:GroupWise?

[Dr.Zong]

I'll agree with the parent.

I just migrated my servers from 5.5EP to 6.5, and it is by far the best solution IMHO. Now, we are a Novell Shop mind you.

We've seen every iteration since the WordPerfect Messaging Server 4.x days. I am debating going to 7.x as the latest version is so solid from the server end and client end (you have to make sure you admin your servers right and not take shortcuts or cheap out, then it's solid). It's decreased my support time dramatically - the users love it, expecially compared to 5.x - the jump we just did was like foing from Exchange 5.5 to Exchange 2000, oh much more fun now. ;)

Re:GroupWise?

[Curmudgeonlyoldbloke]

And with Groupwise, your boss can still keep his Blackberry working just like it did with Exchange!

Re:GroupWise?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, let me tell you that, from an Administrators perspective, your IT department probably doesn't have it set up very well because almost nobody here has those problems consistently.

The real downside is the way it's managed. Consoleone is a terrible memory hog. It was fine when managed with Netware Administrator, and would probably be better managed with iManager.

Re:GroupWise?

[G Money]

We've been using Groupwise for a long time now and it's been a solid platform for us. Version 7 also natively supports pretty much all the functionality of the native Windows client with Evolution as well which is a big draw for us since we don't use Windows for our desktops. I haven't had a chance to try it out yet but I've been waiting for native calendar access for some time from Evolution to Groupwise.

Replaces the meeting room

[charnov]

If you don't have a decent amount of corporate experience, a lot of what Exchange is for may seem alien or useless, but I would have to say along with our document management system it is the core of IT infrastructure for where I work (a multibillion dollar, multinational financial services company). Simply, Exchange provides for email service in all its forms (pop, mapi, imap), news server, webmail backend/front end (along with IIS), public folders, collaborative contacts, mails, document checking, etc., global contacts, shared calendering, shared tasks, etc.

What makes it so special is that it is tightly integrated with MS Office (stuff like round robin document collaboration needs Exchange to work well...it's nifty) and Active Directory integration for management, contacts, policies, etc.

There are a lot of things to get on Microsoft about, but Exchange (at least from version 2000 on) is mostly a thing of beauty. I wish my users only needed straight email, but they need to be able to things like schedule a meeting on the fly from their cell which notifys all the attending, their secretaries, etc. wo can all weigh in and do conflict resolution and get a meeting time set all while the principle in the field is talking to a client in seconds. I haven't mentioned how it all plugs into our document management system and the archiving necessary for NASD, SEC, and IRS compliance that I haven't seen from any other vendor.

If all you need is mail, you'd be insane to go the Exchange route, but if you are already building a Windows infrastructure, you'd be just as insane NOT to have Exchange.

Re:Replaces the meeting room

[Red Flayer]

"...along with our document management system it is the core of IT infrastructure for where I work (a multibillion dollar, multinational financial services company). Simply, Exchange provides for email service in all its forms (pop, mapi, imap), news server, webmail backend/front end (along with IIS), public folders, collaborative contacts, mails, document checking, etc., global contacts, shared calendering, shared tasks, etc."

From Wikipedia:
"Microsoft now appears to be positioning a combination of Microsoft Office, Live Meeting and Sharepoint as its collaboration software of choice. Exchange is now to be simply email and calendaring."

I hope you're forecasting the increase in licensing costs for all the functionality you are currently experiencing under Exchange Server.

Re:Replaces the meeting room

[utopianfiat]

I guess you could contend that all those features in one brown package is convenient for the IT people, but it's not exactly a thing of innovation, either. I mean, almost anything I read here can be done on a linux system without too much pain and torture. I mean sure, on a WINDOWS infrastructure, at least for your server, you'd be fucking screwed (cursing for emphasis) using anything BUT Exchange, I'm sure. But cutting costs by eliminating that licensed software seems quite profitable in mine eyes.
I mean, I have WAP on my cellphone, SMS, email, whatever; not too difficult to email a list of people about a meeting. Now, calendaring and conflict resolution over cellphone- I'm not exactly sure what this is about, perhaps you can reply and explain. I actually posted the parent because I really *didn't* understand what it did beyond email and calendaring. :)

Re:Replaces the meeting room

[Bobzibub]

Of course where I work [company shalt not be named] exchange has been down all morning....

Re:Replaces the meeting room

[George Beech]

If you don't have a decent amount of corporate experience, a lot of what Exchange is for may seem alien or useless
That's stupid just because you don't experience in a big enviroment doesn't mean you don't understand what the product does. But Exchange is WAAAAY overpriced for what it does.
[...]IT infrastructure for where I work (a multibillion dollar, multinational financial services company)
Why do you feel the need to say something like this either come out and say the company or just say "a big company" you just make yourself sound like an arrogent ass when you agrandize the company like that without saying what the company is. Not there is any way anyone can verify the claim either... sorry off track just a pet peeve of mine.
Simply, Exchange provides for email service in all its forms (pop, mapi, imap), news server, webmail backend/front end (along with IIS), public folders, collaborative contacts, mails, document checking, etc., global contacts, shared calendering, shared tasks, etc.
And your point is? any good Groupware program does any and all of these things. and some do it better and have been doing it longer i.e. GroupWise. Basically what you are saying here is that it is an MTA with some calendaring features built in. And how does Exchange check documents? are you sure you're not talking about sharepoint or Office?
I wish my users only needed straight email, but they need to be able to things like schedule a meeting on the fly from their cell which notifys all the attending, their secretaries, etc. wo can all weigh in and do conflict resolution and get a meeting time set all while the principle in the field is talking to a client in seconds. I bet you can get any of the major ... err commercial groupware products to do this.
I haven't mentioned how it all plugs into our document management system and the archiving necessary for NASD, SEC, and IRS compliance that I haven't seen from any other vendor. The point here is that you need Seperate Document management and Archiving solutions ... why not go with a product that has the proven ability to work well. But if your blinded by the MS only system well there is no sense in even aurguing about it.
[...]but if you are already building a Windows infrastructure
your already insane

Re:Replaces the meeting room

[Jodka]

"... where I work... my users only needed straight email, but they need to be able to things like schedule a meeting on the fly from their cell..."

You work for Enron?

Re:Replaces the meeting room

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course where I work [company shalt not be named] exchange has been down all morning....

It might be because the IT dept have been posting about alternatives to exchange on /. all morning!

Re:Replaces the meeting room

[Anonymous Coward]

Public folders, AD integration, collaborative contacts, global contacts, webmail and the like are all things you can get from any decent IMAP mail server. Seriously. I have done all of them with qmail-ldap, binc, apache and squirelmail.

Calendaring is another important corporate feature, I agree. But why does it have to be integrated with email? What does that get me? I go to the calendar application and/or web page, it pulls names from LDAP, if desired it sends email to the people involved. They get emails with web links in them to accept/decline/reschedule. What does direct email integration get me, other than linked failure of email and calendar?

Re:Replaces the meeting room

[Anonymous Coward]

And wasn't it originally an attempt at a Notes ripoff.

Re:Replaces the meeting room

[cbreaker]

You'll get shitty admins and/or insufficient funds to support a stable environment no matter what software you use.

Re:Replaces the meeting room

[amper]

Thank you. I always like it when somebody can understand that there is no substitute for Exchange. The only product I've ever seen that could do what Exchange does is Netscape SuiteSpot, back in the Version 3 days when they were still licensing CS&T's Calendar Server.

Unfortunately, that product no longer exists. CS&T became Steltor, and sold out to Oracle. Netscape imploded. The F/OSS community seems to have little understanding of what exactly it is that Exchange does, or the reasons why Exchange is such an effective tool.

We need less of dumb WebDAV enabled calendaring F/OSS projects, and more real enterprise scheduling projects that can handle things like delegation, resource management, and conflict resolution. Scheduling is critical for an organization, and even some small organizations could benefit from computerized scheduling management.

Now that RedHat owns the Netscape Servers (sadly, not Netscape Calendar Server), perhaps we'll see a revival of SuiteSpot. The Combination of Netscape Enterprise, Certificate, Messaging, Collabra, Directory, and Calendar Servers with Communicator Pro as a client kicked some serious Exchange 5 ass back in the day, but Microsoft has had many years of development time in improving Exchange while the rest of the world has had no response.

If anybody would like to see first hand what Netscape SuiteSpot could do nearly a decade ago, I'd be more than happy to burn you a copy of my installer CD (runs on NT, various *nix's). Just drop me a line.

Re:Replaces the meeting room

[Donny Smith]

>I hope you're forecasting the increase in licensing costs for all the functionality you are currently experiencing under Exchange Server.

First, he said they've already got MS Office.

Second, LiveMeeting does much more and is intended for real-time collaboration (unlike Exchange). If it delivers additional value, people will buy it.

Three, Sharepoint is more like CRM/Intranet system and it does much more than just document routing and sharing.
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2003/techinf o/sharepoint/features.mspx

Therefore, the idea is that instead of internally developing (the stuff the grandparent post mentioned) on top of Exchange, Microsoft offers complete framework for the customer and the customer in turns saves some development cost and gets additional functionality compared to the current Exchange environment.

If MS *didn't* move these features to dedicated products, people'd complain of slowness, feature bloat and whatnot.
Now that they do, they complain of added licensing cost. Whatever.

Re:Replaces the meeting room

[Anonymous Coward]

Ditto. Attachments are causing messages to bounce.

Re:Replaces the meeting room

[Anonymous Coward]

You're able to respond to meeting requests on Blackberrys with your Exchange implementation?

Re:Replaces the meeting room

[Red Flayer]

I don't disagree with you in principle, but I felt that the parent was perhaps missing an important part of MS's new direction for collaboration.

I was just making the point that additional software (and expense) will be required for some of the functionality he currently has with Exchange.

My concern is that we'll have to purchase an expensive license for a ton of funtionality we don't even utilize, just to get the basics. Of course, it's still up to the user to determine whether it's necessary.

Re:Replaces the meeting room

[Anonymous Coward]

This is where the *incompetent IT admins* line comes into place. Even idiots can turn something stable into a POS.

Re:Replaces the meeting room

[cbreaker]

You're right about the FOSS community not getting the point of Exchange. I always see "well, I can run a sendmail/procmail system for free." But it's not the same! Sure, that will get your e-mail. But we want more then just plain e-mail - we want e-mail that works with other users like Exchange/Outlook does.

There's a lot there in the OSS community - great e-mail clients rivaling Outlook and lots of server based e-mail stuff. If I were a good programmer, maybe I'd try to bring it all together. But I'm not =) I hope someone does.. Exchange/Outlook is really great, but it doesn't do anything that I see would be amazingly hard to duplicate with the right talent behind the keyboard.

What about webbased products

[jurt1235]

Tools like eGroupware/phpgroupware deliver the standard suite, and are synchronizable with outlook (never seen it work, I do not have MS windows nor the time to see if it is true), which is actually not needed anymore than either. No distribution of software needed at all, and if wanted globally available.

Re:What about webbased products

[isolationism]

I are looking into running eGroupware where I work, but there is no actual Outlook connector (or connectors for any other desktop clients, like Ximian) built for it. The only mention of such a thing dates back from 2004, saying "The next version will have a connector to integrate with Outlook!" and, almost a year later, such a thing has yet to be delivered.

Re:What about webbased products

[jurt1235]

I run eGroupware (and before that phpGroupware) for a long time now, and the webfunctionality is really good. People just have to let go of their mandatory outlook integration. It is not that outlook adds anything special (Used outlook in office situations, but also used lotus (I liked lotus more, very nice things possible in there), so I have some experience).
Most extra functionality goes wasted on the users anyway, who just manage to use their mail and agenda.

Exchange is rarely the right solution

[realmolo]

I do a lot of networking/computer repair for a lot of businesses, and many of them use Exchange. But you know what they use it FOR? E-mail. Nothing else. Yeah, they at one time may have used the calendar/scheduling features, but they eventually realized that secretaries could do a better job doing the "old" way.

It's not that Exchange is bad (though any program that has an entire cottage industry dedicated to backing it up can't be great), it's that it does TOO MUCH. Very few companies have any chance of getting all their employees to actually use all the features of Exchange. And, really, it might not be worth their time to train them on it in the first place. MOST businesses just need good email. All the *collaborative* features simply require too much of a change in the way people think about their job to really get used.

For the vast majority of small-to-medium-sized businesses, they'd be better served with a good Postfix/Courier-IMAP/SquirrelMail setup, with greylisting and SpamAssassin and anti-virus scanning. All of which is free. And MUCH more stable than any Exchange setup I've ever seen.

The only thing that Exchange has over everything else is that it can use domain usernames/passwords. Big fucking deal.

Re:Exchange is rarely the right solution

[Anonymous Coward]

With some of the monkeys in IT these days it's not suprising to see Exchange setup wrong. Honestly it's not too hard but like all the other alternatives they require some tweaking.

With 4 years of experience Exchange is cake. I can easily have a fully functional server installed, nat'd, and ready to receive mail in about 1.5 hours. That includes an AV install and competent spam idenfication.

Problems you say? Sure if you continually install 3rd party software that interacts with exchange you'll have issues. Many products out there say they are compatible with Exchange 2000/2003 but they end up destroying your information store. Of course Microsoft gets blamed rather than the company who wrote the shitty software...

6 exchange servers across 4 countries and still cruising along. Just be sure to use sendmail or some other alternative on your front end. :)

Re:Exchange is rarely the right solution

[Ozric]

Yep .. I second that ... Very Very few small installs know how to use Exchange. Most just use it for email and personal Cals. Another sad fact is that most end-users will attach files in email insted of using a/the file server to share files and things.

"The only thing that Exchange has over everything else is that it can use domain usernames/passwords. Big fucking deal."

Yes you can do this with a SAMBA PDC, OpenLdap and an IMAP server.

Re:Exchange is rarely the right solution

[realmolo]

Oh, I'm not saying it CAN'T work, I'm saying that almost no business actually needs full-on Exchange. Plus, I still think it's clunky. I like MS software, for the most part, but Exchange is a beast. An expensive beast, too.

Re:Exchange is rarely the right solution

[ckaminski]

Which is a good thing if the user is using webmail. Recent versions of exchange have single-instance storage so that file only consumes one instance worth of space, even if you send it to 1000 recipients.

And if you send a file to someone outside your company, a link to a file server certainly isn't going to be useful. In today's environment of outsourcing and not knowing who's going to be sitting at the desk next to you tomorrow, it's a smart thing to be doing.

Exchange forms. That's it. That's Exchange's Big Contribution to computing.

Re:Exchange is rarely the right solution

[itomato]

They use it for a few reasons:

* To feel important by using more of those MS Office components (Word - check; Excel - check; Outlook - ah ha! check; Powerpoint - hmmmmm *gets cracking on a hum-dinger of a presentation about NOTHING; Access - What the?) They cost a bundle - need to use them!

* Integration with the Windows Network

* Corporate, MS monopolized computing environment dictates its use

* MCSE originally set up the network and all the functionality, carved operating procedures in stone

* Too ignorant to try something original

* Outlook Express is free, so it can't be any good.
---

For the vast majority of small-to-medium-sized businesses, they'd be better served with a good Postfix/Courier-IMAP/SquirrelMail setup, with greylisting and SpamAssassin and anti-virus scanning. All of which is free. And MUCH more stable than any Exchange setup I've ever seen.

So true. I'd be implementing that at my current job if they hadn't just bled anally to upgrade 5.5 to 2000. Instead, I get to extend and entrench that garbage.

In One workday, I loaded a debian box, apt-got each of those packages (and more), configured them, and had the thing working.

With Windows, I have to upgrade the NT4 machine to 2000 & apply all applicable Service Packs (to get to Active Directory) before I can upgrade the MAIL SERVER.

If you are facing this situation, and you have any control over the decision making process, MOVE AWAY FROM WINDOWS AT ALL COSTS (which are actually decreased)

Windows has no place outside of corporations with IT departments that need to support Grandfathered Windowsisms. Shares, public folders, collab, email, all can be handled for $0, with an infinate (and also $0) upgrade path.

Re:Exchange is rarely the right solution

[realmolo]

Well, I don't mind Windows as a server. Active Directory is pretty alright. Group policies are nice. As a file and print server, Windows is good.

But as anything else, it kind of sucks. You get tied into the Microsoft file-formats for everything, making it damn hard to switch to anything else in the future. Which is Microsoft's plan, obviously.

I just find it funny that so many companies jump on the Exchange bandwagon when the FREE alternatives are better in almost every way that counts.

Re:Exchange is rarely the right solution

[Anonymous Coward]

And you're worth $0 as well, so they'll get rid of you without a whim. Sound good to me.

Re:Exchange is rarely the right solution

[b0bby]

I'm not some MS fanboy, but I am quite pragmatic since I am the IT dept for my small company. We have 30 users, and we moved to Small Business Server a few years back. We use email, shared calendars (a lot), and Outlook Web Access (quite a lot), shared contacts (some). So, yes, Exchange can do a lot of stuff we don't use, but that's not the issue. There was nothing available a few years ago that would let us do the things we wanted/needed easily. I looked long and hard for an open source or at least Linux based alternative, and then spent $8k on SBS ($4k for hardware, $4k for the licences). I don't regret it, it was the right choice at the time and might still be. I've had to learn a few things about admining Exchange, but it hasn't been too hard to get a stable setup which meets our needs. The thing that gets me is, to do what we need really shouldn't be too hard, all the pieces are pretty much out there, but no one has put it all together yet. I can see that in a couple of years instead of migrating to SBS 2007 or whatever I'll be looking at some open source solutions, but right now I'm happy enough.

Price differential

[Mr_Silver]

Are they really alternatives when it comes to price? From the article:

With the exception of Scalix Server, all the products have prices lower than those of most enterprise groupware applications, with per-user costs in the range of $20 to $47. Exchange 2003, in contrast, has a per-user license cost of $67, while Scalix Server's price approaches $60 per user.

Surely if you're a big enough corporation to pony up the money for Outlook and want Exchange then the saving of $20-$47 per head is peanuts and it would make more sense to just go with the official Microsoft solution and get 100% compatibility?

I've never put such a business case together for that sort of thing, but I think i would have difficult justifying a partially working non-Microsoft solution to over a fully working Microsoft solution for a mere $7 less per head (which is the Scalix pricing).

Re:Price differential

[fodder69]

Yeah, but having the same features (plus better stability) for less than 1/3 the cost ($20 vs. $47)?

If you can't make a business case for that, ...

And talk about partially working, if you want to do anything with Exchange (like back it up), you will be paying more for 3rd party tools to do the things MS should have provided.

And people buy MS Office which means that Outlook is essentially free.

I don't totally disagree with your point, and Exchange is a good fit for a lot of organizations, but your arguments are pretty silly.

Re:Price differential

[drsmithy]

And people buy MS Office which means that Outlook is essentially free.

Even without Office, Outlook is "essentially free" - every Exchange CAL includes an Outlook license.

Re:Price differential

[Mr_Silver]

Yeah, but having the same features (plus better stability) for less than 1/3 the cost ($20 vs. $47)?

Except that none of them have the same features. From the article "None of the products provides full Outlook-to-Exchange feature fidelity in Outlook".

So yes, you would be saving money but at the expense of functionality and thats ignoring the inclusion of Outlook licences in the Exchange CAL which you wouldn't get if you went with an alternative solution.

Re:Price differential

[fodder69]

The feature missing is Outlook forms, which almost no one uses anyway.

And if you use Office, you get Outlook for free as well, so it's all just a wash.

As I said I don't totally disagree and Exchange is a good tool is you need all the features and integration it provides, but most companies that have it use it as an email server and maybe group calendaring. For that use it is expensive and there are better, less expensive, more stable alternatives.

Re:Price differential

[kyouteki]

Do Small Business Server CALs come with Outlook licenses, too, since SBS has an Exchange server built-in?

Re:Price differential

[richi]

The reviewer got that very wrong. The Exchange server itself costs $4000 per box (or $700 for the crippled version). He kinda forgot that timy point.

No mention of Ipswitch?

[Atticka]

Their Collaboration Suit offers Calandering with Outlook, not sure how well it works though.

check this out:
http://www.ipswitch.com/products/collaboration/ind ex.asp

From their site
Save time with shared calendars and contacts

For many teams, working together productively depends on the ability to easily schedule meetings and share calendars, contacts, and other information. ICS includes powerful collaboration tools that allow Microsoft Outlook users to share their own up-to-date contact lists, calendars, task lists and Outlook notes securely within your organization. You can - with permission - view and edit your colleagues' calendars and contact lists.

Anyone have experiance with Ipswitch?
(I dont work for Ipswitch)

Re:No mention of Ipswitch?

[Anonymous Coward]

Haven't used colab suite, but their Imail product sucks eggs.

Lotus on Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's compare apples to apples here... TFA is referring to the *SERVER* side of things, not the client. Lotus Notes is the *client* and yes, it is pretty much Windows-only but so is MS Outlook.

Lotus *Domino* is the server (analogous to MS Exchange Server), and it's already been ported to Linux for years, in fact Lotus Domino on Linux is one of the best performing and robust Domino platforms you can have, especially on SuSE Linux. IBM doesn't give either the Lotus server or client away for free however, in fact they're quite pricey, but so are MS Exchange server and MS Outlook client. Lotus requires a substantial investment in training, and has a very steep learning curve for administration, plus all your users will hate Lotus because it's not MS Outlook which they're already addicted to using.

All three of these substitute MS Exchange Server wannabes are also somewhat costly too, and that relatively small price difference between the substitute and the real MS thing, I guarantee you will not justify all the hassles of not having the genuine MS Exchange Server in place. MS's integration with Active Directory, powerful admin tools, the worldwide support for antivirus/antispam softwares and a myriad of other 3rd party stuff available for MS Exchange Servers will make any of these substitutes a complete waste of time and money. If you want a free mail server, just make it out of the usual open source stuff on a *nix box and live with it's limitations, or else pony up the cash and buy the real McCoy.

Re:Lotus on Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

In my opinion the Domino Express licenses aren't that pricey at all (you just pay the CALs and get Domino 'for free' with that), but they're only available as long as you have less than 1000 users.

Re:Lotus on Linux

[Pxtl]

As a Notes user who didn't touch full Outlook until recently (before then I was a Thunderbird/custom-web-calendar user, and an OE user before that) I have to say that Notes isn't annoying because it's "not outlook" - it's annoying because it is just ugly, clumsy, and bizarre. It manages to ignore every single UI convention on every issue.

Re:Lotus on Linux

[obdulio]

Lotus Notes is the *client* and yes, it is pretty much Windows-only but so is MS Outlook.

The Lotus Notes client runs fine under wine....

Re: Hosted Exchange

[Anonymous Coward]

1-and-1 does hosted Exchange service for slightly less money: $7/mo and they offer a far more sane 1GB of storage. http://www.1and1.com/

HP's service offers a tiny 100MB for double the money.

-sid

Peanuts?

[brokeninside]

Saving 300K for every 10k users is not peanuts. My previous employer would have saved well over 1M. Granted, that would be a relatively small portion of total costs, but it may very well make the difference between posting a loss and posting a gain on the balance sheet in a tough fiscal year.

Re:Peanuts?

[LurkerXXX]

Right, but do any of these apps really provide the same amount of productivity gains that Exchange does? That's what matters.

Exchange may easily have a feature that on average saves each worker about a minute a week. That's not much time at all. That's about an hour a year. If any of your employes make over 7-20 dollars an hour (probably most of your workers), by going with the (very very slightly) less productive software you've just spent more money on lost productivity than Exchange would have cost you.

It's not the directory, it's what's in it

[charnov]

You can use pre-existing LDAP directories with Exchange, too (so can any decent mail server), but it's all the integration of the Active Directory infrastructure that is the big deal. You CAN do that with LDAP, but I hope you have a very large staff of very talented programmers to do it and maintane it. AD is the basis for single sign-on, identity management, policy management, etc. I have yet to see anything else out side of products costing a heck of a lot more that can handle the scale that AD does...that's probably MS's biggest problem...scaleability.

Re:It's not the directory, it's what's in it

[EvilTwinSkippy]

You CAN do that with LDAP, but I hope you have a very large staff of very talented programmers to do it and maintane it.

Does Apple Computer count?

Re:It's not the directory, it's what's in it

[dAzED1]

I had a horde of linux and solaris servers authenticating to AD, and had cross-platform user dirs on SANs to give it all a consistent look and feel...only took me a couple weekends. Does that make me a large staff of very talented programmers? I'm not even a programmer, I didn't think...

Re:It's not the directory, it's what's in it

[hb253]

Novell eDirectory and GroupWise, nuff said.

IBM Lotus Domino

[HavocBMX]

It always astonishes me that companies forget about the most obvious alternative to exchange which is Lotus Domino. It's been around for many years and has one of the most stable environments for operation and collaboration out there.

For exchange integration Domino has the exchange connector which allows seamless integration with outlook clients.

Re:IBM Lotus Domino

[mcn]

Agree. And if you turn on LDAP on Domino directory, and use LDAP for lookups, etc, by other applications, it's not all that bad compared to Active Directory. And no matter what other people say, I believe Domino is still king of collaboration/workflow. Exchange cannot even compare a tiny bit.

And whenever people say Lotus interface sucks compared to outlook, I think they never really used R5 or ND6 before. I miss Lotus Notes and my tabs in R5 badly, now that my new workplace is using Outlook/Exchange.

Re:IBM Lotus Domino

[LoaTao]

Email, encryption, calendaring, ability to tie directly to a document management system (Domino.doc), web interface, collaboration, application server... the feature list for Domino/Notes is huge. I worked on Domino/Notes for years and really enjoyed it. For large organizations it can be a great choice. Don't think many small to meduim sized businesses could afford it or support it though.

Re:IBM Lotus Domino

[freelock]

The biggest problem with Domino is that it seems to be an orphan...

I've been supporting a local business that uses Domino and Notes, and absolutely loves it. However, they had a server melt-down (two drives went bad in a RAID array, and something else was making Domino disconnect every day or so), so we needed to move to a new server.

And that's when we found out that Domino won't run on any newer systems--no 2.6 Linux kernel, and the only supported Linux distributions are RHEL and SuSE before version 9.0!

My client loves Domino and Notes, but is feeling quite burned by the whole upgrade experience. Seems like a product that could be greatly improved by open sourcing.

Cheers,
John

Re:IBM Lotus Domino

[HavocBMX]

Actually, IBM has actually rectified that problem with the introduction of the Domino Express offerings which are actually geared for smb market.

Basically, what the Express offering offers is a clusterless version of Domino without some of the features of the enterprise version but nothing that would be missed on the smaller scale.

I agree that the support can become daunting at times but with the proper training it's no more of a pain to administer than an exchange server.

Re:IBM Lotus Domino

[HavocBMX]

I completely feel your pain. I recently moves jobs from a IBM Premier Partner to basically Microsoft's biggest Global Reseller and now I'm using Exchange and Outlook and the functionality that I enjoyed is basically gone. As many problems as the Notes/Domino interface had it's solutions far outway the negatives.

I hear R7 is supposed to be amazing in what it can offer. I'm still hoping that IBM will recognize the mistake it's making as it's slowly trying to migrate users from Domino towards Websphere and Workplace.

Re:IBM Lotus Domino

[LoaTao]

Thanks for the heads up. I'll have to check it out.

Re:IBM Lotus Domino

[mixmasterjake]

I was using the Outlook connector at a client's a while back. It worked ok for mail, but I couldn't participate in a lot of the groupware functions like scheduling, etc.

That was a couple of years ago, so perhaps that has all be ironed out.

Re:IBM Lotus Domino

[HavocBMX]

No problem at all if you have any questions feel free to shoot me an email and I'll be happy to either answer them or point you in the right direction.

What about the clients??

[Anonymous Coward]

I have the reverse problem -- I'm forced to connect to an Exchange server and the only client that I've been able to find that sort of works is Evolution. I tried to convince them to turn the Exchange IMAP service on, but was told that "IMAP would violate their goal of putting Outlook on the desktop". Yes, I work for a government institution.

So what would make me really happy is if there was an alternative to Evolution, which I think is even more odious than Outlook. At least Outlook works most of the time instead of just some of the time, and yes, even *crashes* less than Evolution!

The reverse?

[Mr. Underbridge]

I have absolutely no idea why anyone would use Outlook unless their company runs Exchange, it's a completely useless atrocity in my opinion.

As such, what works for the reverse - people who don't (or can't) run Outlook in a company that runs Exchange?

Here's my situation: We run Exchange Server 5.5, *without* IMAP support. Believe me, I've begged for it, it's not happening.

I've tried Ximian/Novell's Exchange Connector, but it only works for Exchange 2000/2003. Our server is too old, and they don't plan to upgrade yet.

Anyone know of anything else that'll work? Right now I'm going in through the Java-riffic Outlook Web Access. I'd almost rather eat glass.

Re:The reverse?

[smartin]

I have absolutely no idea why anyone would use Outlook unless their company runs Exchange, it's a completely useless atrocity in my opinion.

I absolutely agree with you. What the world needs is an open source solution to talking with Exchange for those of us forced to use it. One possiblity may be brutus though it does not appear to be usable yet.

Re:The reverse?

[Mr. Underbridge]

I absolutely agree with you. What the world needs is an open source solution to talking with Exchange for those of us forced to use it. One possiblity may be brutus though it does not appear to be usable yet.

I'll give it a try - they specifically claim support for Exchange 5.5. Thanks.

Re:The reverse?

[Anonymous Coward]

I used Citrix for this. Perhaps you could get your company to get one? Or perhaps MS TS?

Re:The reverse?

[glesga_kiss]

I have absolutely no idea why anyone would use Outlook unless their company runs Exchange, it's a completely useless atrocity in my opinion.

Useless? Tell my auto-syncing mobile phone that. Keeps my calendar, tasks & contacts in sync with zero effort, I use IMAP for the mail. It "just works" and I've yet to see anything better from anyone else. Oh, and the same setup keeps by work and home PCs in sync, using the same phone. Lose/break the phone? Back to usuable in less than five minutes on fresh device. Show me a Linux setup that does half this and I'll consider it.

Outlook has had some huge security holes for sure, but the fact is that nothing else really does the same thing. That's what this topic is about FFS! Calling it "useless" shows that you have no clue to what you are talking about.

*without* IMAP support. Believe me, I've begged for it, it's not happening.

Probably because you came across as an elitist arsehole in the meeting.

Re:The reverse?

[jayloden]

Tell my auto-syncing mobile phone that. Keeps my calendar, tasks & contacts in sync with zero effort, I use IMAP for the mail. It "just works" and I've yet to see anything better from anyone else. Oh, and the same setup keeps by work and home PCs in sync, using the same phone. Lose/break the phone? Back to usuable in less than five minutes on fresh device. Show me a Linux setup that does half this and I'll consider it.

That has nothing to do with Linux, Exchange, or Outlook, and everything to do with what your PHONE manufacturer designed the syncing software to work with. It's not any more difficult to support a full sync of your email, contact, tasks and calendar to Kontact in KDE than Outlook on Windows XP, but the phone/pda manufacturers are choosing to support the most common setup.

Re:The reverse?

[glesga_kiss]

It's not any more difficult to support a full sync of your email, contact, tasks and calendar to Kontact in KDE than Outlook on Windows XP, but the phone/pda manufacturers are choosing to support the most common setup.

I'd agree with you there. My point still stands however, there isn't a better alternative, OSS or otherwise.

Re:The reverse?

[Nintendork]

"...but the phone/pda manufacturers are choosing to support the most common setup."

Okay, here's the plan. First, you start the crusade by not being able to sync with your mobile phone. Next, get others to do it. Once there's enough demand and your market is catered to, I'll look into it.

-Lucas

Re:The reverse?

[strider44]

Useless? Tell my auto-syncing mobile phone that.

OK I will, what's your number?

(sorry had to make that joke)

Re:The reverse?

[MikeBabcock]

Outlook isn't good because your phone sync's to it, your phone sync's to it because everyone uses it.

Back to the original comment; why would anyone use it in the first place?

Sync'ing to different apps is *easy* for any decent programmer, its just a case of caring about the client.

How about alternatives to Outlook?

[helicologic]

I'd be more interested in a discussion of alternatives to Outlook. At my company I have no control over the use of the Exchange server, but I can use whatever I want on my desktop. I use Evolution, but frankly it's pretty sucky and gets worse with each release. Anybody out there in my boat, stuck trying to talk to the corporate Exchange server from a Linux desktop? What do you use?

Re:How about alternatives to Outlook?

[HrothgarReborn]

Switch to a Mac and use Microsoft Entourage. Its a great client. Like Evolution it ties through OWA because even Microsoft cannot figure out how to make anything work with that damn MAPI protocol. But unlike Evolution is has great features and is far better than Outlook. Only drawback is a bit of delay in message delivery (just like Evolution) as opposed to the instant alert Outlook gives through MAPI. If you are a laptop user like I was then it does so much better than Outlook which seems to crash everytime it leaves the network, can never pull up messages and never figure out when you are plugged back in. Entourage keeps you mail local and sincs with Exchange like an email client should, so it handles all this gracefully. You can get it as part of Office 2004.

Funny how the best software MS writes is for Mac :)

Re:How about alternatives to Outlook?

[Anonymous Coward]

I would typically use Mozilla's mail reader or Thunderbird (or whatever it's called today). For text-based clients, I use mutt; I don't recall if it can access POP or IMAP servers.

Re:How about alternatives to Outlook?

[_ZR2_]

I just use fetchmail to download my email off the exchange server. Once it is local you can use whatever you want to read it. I use a combination of pine and thunderbird.

Some info about those alternatives...

[strredwolf]

A client of mine had wanted to switch away from Exchange, and try a few of these out. Out of the ones mentioned:

Bynari Insight: We've tried working with the software, but testing resulted in much frustration in trying to set it up properly. I'll give kudos for the Bynari folk for helping out... but it looks like there's a long way to go. Maybe they need to upgrade their config to reflect Postfix changes...

CommunigatePro: Everyone favorite, because it's so eaaaaaaazzzzzzzzyyyyy. This one all I needed to do was manual tweak a few things and it's running perfectly. Expensive, but worth it.

Scalix: We're testing this one out now. It requires ether RedHat, Fedora, SuSE, or an RPM based system that you can fake out to be ether one of the three -- it ships as an RPM-based installer. It also runs on Java, but it comes with Tomcat, configures itself and Apache, and it works! The community edition is out and free, with some limitations, and there's no native mail fetching (but we can use Fetchmail).

We haven't tried Gordano, but we have tried exchange4linux (e4l) and that was a mess to set up.

Re:Some info about those alternatives...

[tylersimon]

We use Gordano product at work and are completely happy with it. Most of us use the GMS Webmail bit and can share our contacts\calendars just fine. A few use the Outlook plugin (MAPI which you need to install separately) which synchronizes nicely with the Webmail part. Nice and fast too.

Communigate Pro

[Spazmania]

I ran an earlier version Communigate Pro at a previous job. Simply put, it is the only closed-source software package I actively recommend. Its just that good.

The web mail is slick. IMAP works beautifully. The API for customer-added functionality is extensive. The system is rock solid reliable, and FAST FAST FAST.

If you have too many accounts, they support clustering on multiple servers. Here's a quote from their manual:

When your site serves more than 150,000-200,000 accounts, or when you expect really heavy IMAP/WebMail/MAPI traffic, you should consider using a Cluster configuration.

Huh. So if you have less than 150,000 accounts you can do it with just one server. I'd like to see an open source mail package that can live up to that particular boast.

Re:Communigate Pro

[pmsr]

Yes, a pity about their MAPI connector for Outlook. The words slow and inefficient come to mind. Just follow their mailing list and see what i am talking about. I almost cried after installing it. It is really a pity, since the rest of the product is so perfect. It stands out as a big wine stain in a white cloth.

/Pedro

Re:Communigate Pro

[mrroach]

>So if you have less than 150,000 accounts you can do it with just one server. I'd like to see
>an open source mail package that can live up to that particular boast.

Try Hula.

-Mark

Re:Communigate Pro

[bc90021]

CommuniGate is an excellent piece of software. I've used it, and I would recommend it, too, if I could...

The only problem with Communigate Pro is that it is *****EXPENSIVE*****. For a small hosting company with 1000 email boxes, they wanted *****THIRTY-TWO THOUSAND DOLLARS*****. That's *****THIRTY TWO DOLLARS PER MAILBOX*****. That's insane. Even Microsoft doesn't charge anywhere near that much, and I think MS's products are way overpriced.

In case I haven't made my point, it's ridiculously expensive. It's not geared to any business that isn't already an ISP. (I know, because I used to work at a small ISP, and they used it, but still had serious reservations about the price.)

There's also SurgeMail, which is very similar to CommuniGate, but isn't nearly as expensive.

Re:Communigate Pro

[Spazmania]

Looks interesting. I'll be sure to check it out when the authors reach 1.0 and declare it production-ready.

Re:Communigate Pro

[erlenic]

Even Microsoft doesn't charge anywhere near that much,

Exchange is $67 per mailbox, more than twice Communigate Pro.

Re:Communigate Pro

[Spazmania]

Check again. I was just quoted $60300 for 10,000 users last week. That's $6.03 per mailbox. Even the generic price on their web page for 200 users is only $23 per mailbox. My understanding is that the price per user only goes down from there.

Unless you were trying to buy a cluster configuration for 1000 users? I suppose you could do that, overkill and all, but if you're investing in the kind of infrastructure clusters take why are you complaining about $30,000?

NOVELL GROUPWISE is forgotten?! Suse, people!

[Anonymous Coward]

How the hell can you forget Novell Groupwise?

Full Linux solution with eDirectory (formally NDS) solution for Linux and Windows clients. Integration with Evolution AND Outlook.

Seems a funny oversite to me.

I mean that this isn't like the 2nd most popular commercial Linux distro of all time or anything like that...

Kerio Mailserver 6.1

[Anonymous Coward]

We have been using Kerio (kerio.com) Mailserver v6.0 and recently upgraded to v6.1 - it has outlook/exchange plugins and we've had minimal complaints. Pretty solid product, although I can't really comment on the others mentioned here since I've never used them. A mail server that runs on tomcat/java sounds like a bad idea, but that's just me... tomcat sure has improved lately with the 5.x releases, so im sure runaway java processes aren't such a big deal anymore...

Re:Kerio Mailserver 6.1

[Carcass666]

We are running Kerio 6.0 as an Exchange replacement (we were on Exchange 5.5). Most of our users are on Microsoft Outlook 2K or 2K3. Our main reason for selecting Kerio was its marketting as an Exchange replacement. Here are some of our experiences:

• As a POP3/SMTP server, it works adequately.
• Antiviral capability works adequately
• Anti-spam (based on SpamBayes) is mediocre - it allows only level of Spam filtering (i.e. no "suspected spam" vs. "spam")
• Their "Outlook Connector" - which allows Outlook to manage email from the server without downloading it to the client, is junk. Among other things, it's extremely slow, you can't search body text, and in 6.1 people have been getting crashes with it.
• In 6.1, you can only do backups 3 times per week (although there is apparently a kludge around this)
• Importing our email from Exchange 5.5 was painful - their import utility crashed constantly and it took days to migrate < 100 mailboxes
• After misleading customers about the capabilities of its Outlook Connector, and subsequent flames on their message boards, Kerio has instituted a "no comment" policy about development - they will make no commitments to when bugs will get fixed or promised functionality will be implemented
• Kerio is marketting an offline caching capability for its product. However, only contacts and calendar information are cached, email does not get cached!

In short, my bosses are forcing us back to "how things were". We are going to bite the bullet and go back to Exchange. I'm bummed, because there is a lot to like about Kerio (the web interface, integrated antivirus and spam and management are all nice, and it's a lot easier to manage than Exchange) - but the Outlook Connector's poor functionality make it an inadequate replacement for Exchange

Unlike my predecessor, take a look at the Kerio forums before you buy this product.

Oracle Collaboration Suite

[ataX]

I don't know why always when there is a discussion about "enterprise messaging systems" OCS is never mentioned. OCS is a US$60/usr messaging system that has Email, Calendar, a WebDAV/NFS/SMB/FTP File Server (Oracle Files), Webconference, UltraSearch (Lets you search inside documents in your Oracle Files installation, in your email, in the intranet or internet etc), it also has Wireless access (via Voice/PDA/Phone/etc), and in the new version it will have Instant messaging, all inside an Oracle Database. and you don't have to pay for the database, you just pay per user and all the Oracle stack is included.

Re:Oracle Collaboration Suite

[DJRansom]

At work (an international sales company) we tried OCS about a year and a half ago. Unfortunantly it went horribly. After 6+ months and with multiple Oracle Consultants (supplied Oracle itself) we were unable to get it up. It may have improved since then but for us the experience turned us off. Even got our Oracle DBA to rant about oracle products.

Re:Oracle Collaboration Suite

[ataX]

Yeah, it can be a pain in the arse, but i did it like 6 months ago (the installation/configuration) and it went really well, it's just a case of knowing how everything works, since it has a couple of databases and some application server instances.

Groupware never got anybody laid...

[defile]

Groupware Bad
And I said, "Jesus Mother of Fuck, what are you thinking! Do not strap the 'Groupware' albatross around your neck! That's what killed Netscape, are you insane?" He looked at me like I'd just kicked his puppy.

Re:Groupware never got anybody laid...

[killjoe]

Wow, JWZ does not like groupware. I guess we all have to immediately give up everything we are using. I mean what's the use of doing something jwz does not approve of?

How about Kolab?

[sskang]

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...

Re:How about Kolab?

[Anonymous Coward]

From all I've seen Kolab works very well (AFAIK all the KDE developers have an account on a server running Kolab)

Re:How about Kolab?

[HermanAB]

The problem is that nobody knows how to get it to work - and the few that do, consider it a closely guarded secret...

If only Evolution has a Windows port...

[Calyth]

If only Evolution has a Windows port, then groupware servers like OpenGroupware.org and Kolab wouldn't have to rely on a proprietary connector to work with Windows client.
When that happens, savvy admins wouldn't have to deploy Exchange/Outlook, and wouldn't have to worry about dealing with users who are just far too used to Outlook.

Re:If only Evolution has a Windows port...

[Anonymous Coward]

The server side (equiv of exchange server) has been largely done. Several are, in fact, better than exchange server in many or even most situations.

The client side (equiv of outlook) has been done for 1) web clients and 2) *nix.

Missing: client for windows, client for mac. Which is only, like, 90% of the client population (and 2/3 of my client population)

Granted, the web client is good for 90% of the client situations.

Re:If only Evolution has a Windows port...

[Touisteur]

Tor Lindquist is working on it at Novell. Looking at his work on the The Gimp windows port, you can bet it'll come soon =o)...

However, there's still MUCH work...

AD alternatives?

[Anonymous Coward]

Without full AD integration it's still kind of pointless.

So we need to replace AD too.

And the best exchange replacement is...

[Anonymous Coward]

The first Exchange, MSmail.

Easy to install, nothing to really setup except users, allows integration of calendars, tasks, mail, etc. All hiding on a Windows 95 disk.

I completely agree

[Anonymous Coward]

I've used CGPro everywhere from small businesses with 50 people to ISPs with 400,000 users. It handles spam and virus filtering like a champ, it's super easy to administrate, it's very very very stable and it WORKS! Definetly the best non-Free mail/communications software i've ever used on the back or frontend.

After reading this article i'm definetly going to look into implementing the MAPI connector for Outlook. Our Free/Busy hack is getting old fast.

SMTP/ IMAP predates http

[tod_miller]

So why can't people just make a groupware server that does X standard, make thunderbird and firefox support them (natively and web based) and be done with it.

Write some migration tools. Viola.

Or?

To confirm you're not a script,
please type the word in this image: rested

random letters - if you are visually impaired, please email us at pater@slashdot.org

I really like Exchange4Linux

[tzanger]

Exchange4Linux is an open-protocol, open-source Exchange Server replacement. It's written in Python, and the Outlook connector, while also written in Python, is not for free, but reasonably priced (small quantity price is $50 IIRC). Everything, and I mean everything is stored in a PostgreSQL database. There is something very, very cool about being able to run arbitrary SQL queries on your todos, calendars, contacts and even emails. It brings a level of data integration together that sometimes makes me want to weep. Perfect example: Our customer service department has a rotating "on-call" person. They have a calendar in which they organize who's turn it is. I query the DB once a day to let my Asterisk server know who to redirect the call to. Totally seamless, and that's just a small small example.

Neuberger-Hughes, the company responsible for Exchange4Linux also does the whole turnkey solution for those who want someone to yell at but still want the peace of mind that having your data in open software can only provide.

I don't work for them, I am just a happy user of their software.

Re:I really like Exchange4Linux

[stud9920]

Perfect example: Our customer service department has a rotating "on-call" person. They have a calendar in which they organize who's turn it is. I query the DB once a day to let my Asterisk server know who to redirect the call to. Totally seamless, and that's just a small small example.

That's what shared mailboxes are made for.

Communigate gets my vote too

[centron]

I've been running Communigate on my home system for years for myself and friends and it just works, with a small footprint and lots of features. Granted I have not run it in an enterprise environment, but I am familiar with Outlook and Exchange, and Communigate gives you what you need. Plus it can either integrate with or run its own LDAP directory, providing a lot of the same abilities as Exchange if it is run in a mostly MS or even non-MS shop.

The interface is entirely web-based, it runs on all the major operating systems, including Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris, Windows, and others. The webmail system supports custom skins, so if you don't like it, change it, or just make it look like the rest of your company's website. Finally, they have a free trial version that doesn't expire. The only feature limitation is that it appends outgoing messages with a 'this is trial software' message.

Oh god mod parent flamebait

[utopianfiat]

That is so completely offtopic I would throw my flaming modpoints of doom at you if I had any.

Re:Oh god mod parent flamebait

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed. Shows a total lack of respect/intelligence, and it's funny that the poster is attempting to discipline the well thought out parent post.

FirstClass!

[Jackson_Ash]

http://www.firstclass.com/

A long time ago I used to work for the company that made the software, so perhaps I'm biased. However, this offers the same functionality as Exchange/Notes and a whole lot more. Unified messaging is the heart of this product, but the featureset is staggering. Server support on Linux/Windows/OSX, client support for each, as well as web/phone/pda/etcetera.

I could go on and on about the features, but http://www.firstclass.com/AboutFC/ has a tonne of information to peruse and it will do a better job of informing you than I will.

Do yourself a favour and at least look at the features before settling on some other product that will offer either less functionality, or a much higher price point.

JA

vtiger

[mmerlin]

Haven't tried it myself, but has anyone tried Vtiger?

Open source Outlook synchronizer plugin:
http://www.vtiger.com/products/crm/microsoft-outlo ok-integration.html

http://sourceforge.net/projects/vtigercrm
http://www.vtiger.com/

Exchange Killer

[Colin E. McDonald]

I agree with the guy who discussed Hula above. I have the same objection with trying to always "keep up with the joneses" with Samba as well. Why not build an alternative that is better, faster, and easier to install. I have a lot of SMB (Small-Medium Business not samba) clients and almost all of them run Small Business Server 2003 Standard. For the price and ease of management you can't beat it. I would love to see an open source/Linux Exchange killer but I think trying to be like MS is definitely the wrong direction. As I was saying before, we do the same thing with samba and the smb suite. Why not build a kick ass directory server that doesn't require a high level understanding of ldap (and chewing gum) and build something similar to the Novell Client, only create a Win32 installable that automatically joins up to the directory and gives you the same benefits that exist in a Windows domain environment. The reason people like SBS and Exchange so much is that it pretty much runs out of the box. It works great with client side Outlook and the OWA is kick ass.(Much better in Exchange 2003). We need to create a backend that has it's own "real time" client (that doesn't require you to use MAPI) and a good web access platform that gives you most of the functionality of a fat client. I keep my eyes peeled for this subject area. Hula is very interesting as well. I installed it a few months back but I have not played with it that much.

devil is in the details

[defected]

If you look at GroupWise or Notes or whatever competitor product they pretty much have the basic features of email, calendaring etc...

Migrating from Exchange becomes a nightmare when you try to migrate functionality that depends on very specific features of Exchange like: OMA, OWA, cached exchange mode, custom MAPI applications, Exchange application connectors, Exchange only plugs-ins like GFI Essentials, query-based distribution lists, custom public folder applications, custom AD/Exchange schema attributes, server side rules, RPC over HTTP and so on.

After a couple of hours of this kind of inventory in a large enterprise it becomes very clear that migration from Exchange will become very complicated and expensive - hence that's why very few organizations attempt it.

No competitor can guarantee 100% compatibility with Exchange dependant software so you're forced into a situation where you have to troubleshoot some custom MAPI code some developer wrote to query calendars for invetory shipments that doesnt' seem to work after the migration. Then you have to answer some user's question about why his Ipaq isn't processing rules properly in Outlook or why he can't change his signature in Outlook Web access anymore or why the address book doesn't contain some custom LDAP attribute .Multiply this a hundred times and your work gets cut out for you.

If you're a mom and pop shop with 50 or so users Exchange migration is a snap but in an enteprise it will take 6-12months to migrate your email and collaboration system completely.

what about kolab?

[RelliK]

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/

Yoga

[slim]

Way back in 1998, work began on an open source Lotus Notes replacement. The design looked pretty cool, and they got replication between Berkley DBs doing I think, before the whole thing stagnated -- probably because very few people are really interested in groupware, and those who are probably don't want to model it on Notes...

Anyway, it was called Yoga, and its homepage is still available.

And the reason I mention this? Well, it started off called Gnuotes, which didn't exactly trip off the tongue, and so the name changed to Yoga. While Yoga stands for "Your Open Groupware Application", it was also chosen because they were "adopting the Lotus position", which I think makes it the wittiest name for a failed Open Source project EVER.

Open-xchange by Netline

[ehaggis]

Open-xchange is a great product. Reliable, fast and intuitive interface. It was easy to roll out, easy to maintain. Comes with Spam filters and all kinds of goodies. Best of all, it looks like an MS Exchange server to an Outlook client with shared public folders, calendars, contacts, notes, etc...

Lotus Notes pro/con

[ehaggis]

I have worked with Domino for years. It is the only certification I hold. That being said...

Pros:
Domino is a solid, secure workhorse.

Cons:
Domino can become difficult to manage if not planned for the correct enviroment from the beginning. An evolving Notes Domain (and sub-domains) can become an administration nightmare.

If you know for sure where your setup is heading, Domino is a great choice. If you can't get a definitive answer from upper-management, look elsewhere for a solution.

Lotus Notes on Linux

[hweimer]

Lotus Notes is the *client* and yes, it is pretty much Windows-only but so is MS Outlook.

Lotus Notes runs under Linux if you use wine. IIRC IBM had to do some work to get it going, but at least since 2002 it's possible.

Open-Xchange?

[forevermore]

Pity they completely overlooked Open-Xchange and its free open source cousin.

Re:Open-Xchange?

[Doc Ruby]

I'm experimenting with the OSS O-X. What differences have you noticed between the commercial vs free versions? If I'm building Java servlets in the OSS version, can't I just reinstall them in the commercial version, when I'm ready to launch? Can I have a rollout strategy where I just upgrade to the commercial version, buying a support contract, without rewriting any of my SW? And what about buying Novell support?

I LIKE Outlook and Express

[obarthelemy]

I've tried Pegasus, the Mozilla mail client, Opera, and a few others... None are as stable, easy to use and configurable as Outlook and especially outlook express. For an example, try
1- Moving your local messages to a specific directory
2- Drag and dropping an incoming email to another account (I do that to archive important maisl to an IMAP server)

Re:I LIKE Outlook and Express

[periol]

2- Drag and dropping an incoming email to another account (I do that to archive important maisl to an IMAP server)

I just moved an email from a POP3 account to an IMAP account and back in Thunderbird. This functionality has been around since I've been using Thunderbird, which was the 0.3 release. I assume this means the functionality is available on Mozilla Mail as well, but I haven't used that in over a year.

Use Web Access?

[nurb432]

If you are running 2000 or 2003, it has integrated webaccess.

Works with browsers other then IE. Though you lose some features ( go figure ).

When it comes down to it...

[rosewood]

When it comes to giving a small business groupware features, SBS2003 + Outlook 2003 owns all of those alternatives backwards and forwards, frontways and sideways.

Don't worry about this jackass

[cbreaker]

He is obviously on an Anti-MS kick.

Exchange is good software. It Just Works. And it performs exceptionally well. I've been working with it for years.

I consulted at a Univerisity with two Active/Passive Exchange clusters servicing over 12,000 users. Some used Outlook, some used POP/IMAP, some used OWA. It was Exchange 2000, later 2003. It's not like these were powerhouse big-iron type machines, either - quad processor boxes with 4GB RAM attached to a Clariion, I think they were 2.4Ghz Xeons. Of course, those were the mailbox servers - we had other machines for connectors and OWA front-end. But that's just normal best practices with a busy Exchange environment.

Another placed I worked at had dual-processor Compaq DL380's running the show, with over 2500 users per node. No sweat.

Usually, poor performance on Exchange is due to mis-configurations and not enough disk I/O. You can throw as many processors you want at Exchange, but it's really all about IO.

This guy also doesn't know the first thing about database servers if he's bitching about the memory usage on Store.exe. Store.exe is (as we know) the information store database service. It will use as much memory as it needs, and as is available. Usually the big memory usage is just cached data. Store.exe will give up all it's cached paged as soon as another app requires it. A lot of these kids now a days still think every app needs to run in 200k memory or it's "bloat." What's the point in having 4GB RAM if your applications don't use it?

They've obviously never administered a large database server. A big MS-SQL database server will cache the whole database, if it can. 1GB on store.exe? Try 4GB on mssql.exe.

I agree that there's issues with Exchange when it comes to administration (Public Folders can get unmanagable if you don't pay very close attention to user activity, although since Exchange 2000 I've never had any issues with PF Replication.) Overall, there's no other system that's as capable as Exchange for your basic groupware needs. It's VERY stable.

Re:Don't worry about this jackass

[Master of Transhuman]

"It's very stable."

Not what I've seen on Google.

"Results 1 - 10 of about 5,200,000 for Microsoft Exchange problem"

Not to mention mailbox problems, double-delivery of mail, failure to deliver mail, losing mail, etc., etc.

I can imagine the results if I key in "Microsoft Exchange security".

Typical Microsoft product as far as I can tell.

Re:Don't worry about this jackass

[Anonymous Coward]

Your metric sucks.

Sorry.

Re:Don't worry about this jackass

[zaphod123]

A couple of comments... My previous job was at an ISP. Your configuration is big iron compared to the boxes we were running sendmail on. Two sun servers with dual 300 procs servicing 10000 users. This was
overkill before the need for spam filtering.

We could always tell the customers who ran exchange. Their mailserver would go down at least once per week. You can blame poor administration, etc, but it was consistent from site to site....

Re:Don't worry about this jackass

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure, Exchange 'Just Works' if you're using MS Active Directory (which requires MS DNS [or black magic] to handle their funky Service DNS lookups), and locking each and every desktop into Outlook (or using the admittedly decent web client, which last I saw wasn't feature equivalent to Outlook).

And that's assuming that you don't even want to think about customizing the thing.

Re:Don't worry about this jackass

[amper]

I have to agree with the earlier poster and say that the hardware configurations you quote above are gratuitously powerful for a system that only served 12,000 users. Quad 2.4GHz Xeons with 4GB of RAM each, plus you have them in Active /Passive clusters? For only 12,000 users? How many machines total did you use--it sounds like at least 4 or 6 of them, plus your SAN, and as you say, those are just the mailbox servers! I know you need this much power to run Exchange, but really, let's inject a little reality into the picture. The fact that Exchange requires this much iron is ridiculous.

With a more efficient system, you ought to be able to run several hundred thousand users off of hardware like that, if not a million plus.

Re:Don't worry about this jackass

[Amouth]

I fully agree there are many options personaly i manage sevral Exchange 2003 servers and the clients use outlook 2003 or just the OWA i have no complaints. We are currently running around 360gb of mail data and have had no issues.

now the one thing it does lack is good av/spam

this is were i have gone the other route.. you can't hit my exchange server from the outside. you have to go through sendmail and smapassian and clamav - you make it through that it will send it on to exchange for handeling. It is a great setup and i would recomend it to anyone.

Sure exchange costs money but honestly OWA is nice and the time it takes to deploy is worth every penny compared to having to put things together to make somehting as nice. In my mind you are paying for the easy deployment - and to be honest it works damn well.

Re:Don't worry about this jackass

[Just Some Guy]

Exchange is good software. It Just Works. And it performs exceptionally well.

If by "Just Works" you mean "Barely Works", sure. Our tuned [1] Exchange server was absolutely crawling until I put a much-lower-specced Postfix/ClamAV/Greylist server in front of it to take the brunt of what the Internet was throwing at us.

Of course, it actually works reasonably well now (since it only has to handle pre-filtered traffic), so maybe that's what you meant: a firewalled Exchange is adequate in many cases. If so, then I apologize and withdraw my clarification.

[1] Our Windows IT guy actually knows what he's doing - if he says it's tuned, then it is.

Re:Don't worry about this jackass

[cbreaker]

What kind of users? You realize that Exchange users are a little more demanding on a system then a pop client right? There's a shit load more functionality then sendmail, and the user experience is a lot better - more real-time information handed out to users. Not to mention, ohh, you know. Sharing information. Centralized address books. Public folders..

Plus, I didn't say the machines were taxed. We could have slapped on another 15,000 - 25,000 users without many issues besides more space on the SAN.

Plus, quad proc machines these days just don't cost what they used to. Might as well have a high ceiling?

Re:Don't worry about this jackass

[amper]

You realize that Exchange users are a little more demanding on a system then...

Yes, but OpenLDAP, Cyrus IMAP, INN, Apache, SquirrelMail, Majordomo, and Sendmail together can handle almost everything that Exchange can (minus the all-important calendaring/scheduling) and scale a hell of a lot better than that. Now if we could just get a real C&S package as F/OSS, then we'd have something worth a damn.

Someplace out there, I still have a Netscape SuiteSpot install running about 4,000 users off of one dual PII/233 IBM PC Server box with a RAID5 array.

Plus, I didn't say the machines were taxed. We could have slapped on another 15,000 - 25,000 users without many issues besides more space on the SAN.

That makes a lot more sense.

As an aside, check out the system config page for CMU's Cyrus implmentation--especially the pre-Cyrus Murder config, which was able to keep up with (barely) 6800 concurrent connections. Their new system is much more elaborate (on a par with what you described), but it handles 26,000+ accounts.

Re:Don't worry about this jackass

[coronaride]

You really are an idiot/jackass if you think that googling the term "Microsoft Exchange problem" is an accurate way to discover the ability of an application. I performed your search and over half of the results on the first page alone were advertisements.

Do everyone a favor and stay away from computers for the rest of your life.

Typical Microsoft product as far as I can tell.

Oh yeah, and go take your mindless Microsoft-hating ass back to school so that you can learn deductive reasoning.

Re:Don't worry about this jackass

[coronaride]

...discover the ability of an...

sorry...I meant stability.

Re:Don't worry about this jackass

[Shakrai]

Sure exchange costs money but honestly OWA is nice and the time it takes to deploy is worth every penny compared to having to put things together to make somehting as nice. In my mind you are paying for the easy deployment - and to be honest it works damn well.

That "easy deployment" will bite you in the ass when Microsoft drops support for your version and you need to migrate. I recently completed an Exchange 5.5/NT SBS -> 2003/2003 Server migration. It was quite a bit of a pain in the ass -- though in MS' defense I'll grant that a lot of that had to do with the fact that it was NT SBS and that the configuration on it was kind of weird to begin with.

That said it has been my experience that migrations between different versions of Microsoft software either go very easy or become a complete clusterfuck. And god help you if it becomes a clusterfuck.

Re:Don't worry about this jackass

[nmb3000]

"It's very stable."

Actually it is, with a competent administrator. I've managed a medium-sized company's IT deptartment, including Exchange server for years, from 5.5 to 2000 to 2003. All in all it's worked solidly for a huge majority of the time, increasingly so with each new version.

Not what I've seen on Google.

"Results 1 - 10 of about 5,200,000 for Microsoft Exchange problem"

Wow. Talk about a good source of information about a product's stability, the number of Google query results. "Let's see how many pages show up for a vague term like 'Microsoft Exchange Problem'. I'm sure there were no pages with something like: "I switched to Microsoft Exchange because of my problems with Linux".

If that's the case then I'm glad I'm not a Linux webserver admin:

Results 1 - 30 of about 15,700,000 for linux email server problem

Security? Let's ask the Stat-O-Matic!

Results 1 - 30 of about 12,200,000 for microsoft exchange security

Results 1 - 30 of about 28,200,000 for linux email server security

Typical Microsoft product as far as I can tell.

Why? It's popular, has amazing integration, and works very well? I see.

Give me a break and get off the typical Slashdot "Microsoft all bad! Bad, bad, bad!" bandwagon.

Re:Don't worry about this jackass

[cbreaker]

Maybe he's an awesome IT guy, but I've deployed Exchange servers - even Exchange 5.5 servers several years back - that process millions of SMTP messages a day.

It's possible that he just doesn't have the experience necessary to run a busy Exchange system. I've had years of experience with Exchange and I still learn new little things all the time. You can install it and go, and it works pretty good. But you can really do a lot of customization and performance tuning with an Exchange server.

Re:Don't worry about this jackass

[cbreaker]

I really like Exchange. I try not to be a poster boy for it, but even after 7 years of working with Exchange on a primary basis, I still like it.

I've had my eye out for a real alternative to Exchange for years. Some come very close - Groupwise 4 vs Exchange 5.5 was a pretty good match although Exchange still had more going for it. I've particularly looked for a good OSS solution but I just haven't found anything.

You could spend some time getting an OpenLDAP/IMAP/INN/Apache/Etc system all running in tandem and bring it kinda close - but the user experience just won't match what you can get with Exchange and Outlook. You'd end up with a somewhat disjointed set of tools for users to use.

Calendering/Scheduling is *huge* with most companies. You can do it with a lot of mail clients, but none of them do it like Outlook does it when using Exchange. While I do believe that you don't really need Calendaring and e-mail together so tightly, it does work out pretty well when you need to respond to invitations personally and/or have that automatically update meetings and tasks.

I think a client like Evolution or even KMail could bring a lot to the table if they could bring together server-based e-mail and collaboration in a unified way like Outlook does with Exchange. Both of these clients are just as nice as Outlook, but they're just as bad as Outlook when Outlook is in POP3 or IMAP mode.

Re:Don't worry about this jackass

[Master of Transhuman]

Unfortunately, the point was that Exchange was claimed to be "stable" and "easy" and a host of other Microsoft shillisms, none of which are supported by the numerous problem reports listed by Google.

I, too, noticed, that some of the results were not directly related to specific Exchange problems.

But many were.

The point stands.

Re:Don't worry about this jackass

[Master of Transhuman]

Amusingly, the first Linux email server Google result talks about NT going down - that was the problem in that result.

Also, I'm not too surprised about the email security count since sendmail is the most common UNIX/Linux email server and it definitely has had its share of security problems.

It's also far OLDER than Exchange - goes back to 1982.

My point was simply that the Microsoft shills were saying that Exchange was "easy", "stable" and by implication problem-free for the most part.

Google proves that is not entirely true.

The point stands.

As I've said numerous times before:
1) Windows is CRAP.
2) Linux is ALSO CRAP.
3) BUT Linux is FREE CRAP.

Re:Don't worry about this jackass

[nmb3000]

As I've said numerous times before:
1) Windows is CRAP.
2) Linux is ALSO CRAP.
3) BUT Linux is FREE CRAP.

I like that :)

Re:Don't worry about this jackass

[killjoe]

I think one of the largest hidden cost of exchange is that you need a top notch, pretty much full time admin for it.

Re:Don't worry about this jackass

[coronaride]

your point is crippled...it stands not. I'm going to leave it at that because you've proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that you have no ability to logically reason...either that or you're about 11 years old.

Re:Don't worry about this jackass

[Thing 1]

[...] though in MS' defense I'll grant that a lot of that had to do with the fact that it was NT SBS [...]

How is that MS' defense? Didn't they write SBS?

Re:Don't worry about this jackass

[cbreaker]

It depends.

Exchange 5.5 was a great product - I know a lot of people didn't like it but I loved it. And it was a lot more simple because it had it's own directory. Someone with basic Exchange knowledge could run a single server site without much ado. Now, with the AD stuff, it's definately more complicated.

It's not completely fair to say it's Exchange that needs a full time admin because a lot of the work is within the realm of AD.

Fortunately, if you've got decent quality hardware, once it's configured, it usually just works. If you're a small company, you could have a consultant that could come in once in awhile to do things AD and Exchange related (if someone is an Exchange expert, they should also be an AD expert.)

I worked for a company a couple years back that had hundreds of small business clients and we did they admin work. We put just about everyone on Exchange and many sites would just run, with minimal downtime due to patching and updates, for months and months - in some cases, years.

However, if you think about what would be involved in maintaining a "close to exchange" system based on OSS that a lot of these people around here keep pushing, I'd dare you to not have an expert on site to handle the OpenLDAP, Apache, Squirrelmail, INN, IMAPd and Sendmail mish-mash.

Re:Don't worry about this jackass

[amper]

I don't necessarily agree that the user experience is better under Outlook, especially when you start looking at the sheer complexity of the later versions. That said, most of the problem with usability on the F/OSS side of things is related to the fact that there hasn't been a re-creation of Netscape Communicator Pro w/Calendar. It's the C&S part that really makes or breaks the system.

Netscape SuiteSpot with Communicator Pro was seamless, and light years better than what Microsoft, Lotus, or Novell were offering in 1997-8.

There's a really good article from OSDL about their search for a good cross-platform scheduling solution, and how they never really found anything. Granted, it's from 2003, but it's not as if things have improved much since then. I have to laugh every time somebody brings up Hula or Sunbird. Both of these projects are an utter waste of time for anyone who needs a true scheduling system.

A F/OSS replacement for Exchange is the Holy Grail, as far as I'm concerned. Oh, and a replacement for Visio, too. I'd even take a commercial solution at this point, as long as it was more open than Exchange.

Re:Don't worry about this jackass

[killjoe]

The last place I worked had about 300 employees. They had two exchange admins and a sendmail front end to handle the spam. In fact by the time they added virus checking, spam filtering and the sendmail layer it ended up being worse of a mishmash then anything in unix.

What's worse is that even with those two exchange admins and the help desk people they continually had outages, mysterious slowdowns, and dropped mail.

Maybe both of the exchange admins were dummies but they both had MCSEs. I do think it takes a rocket scientist to admin an exchange machine. That's my experience and nothing you have said really changes my experience or my conclusion.

As far as I can tell exchange is a pig and a nice cash cow for MS.

Re:Don't worry about this jackass

[cbreaker]

Well, I don't know what's going on at that place you worked at, but my previous contract had me and a Junior admin providing Exchange support for the company of 10,000 users. No sweat. And during the entire 12 month contract, we were down three times - on Sunday mornings for patches. Since we had cluster failovers, total down time was in the realm of two and a half minutes per down-time.

I don't know man. Exchange works great, but I guess if you have bad admins, shitty hardware, and an IT department that's heavily mis-managed, you'll have a lot of down time. As would be the case of anything else.

As far as your claim of a normal Exchange system being as much of a mish-mash as an OSS self-built system, you're dreaming.

A/V for exchnage Just Works. Scanmail for Exchange (trend) and Symantec for Exchange are two products that are simply set it and forget it. And they provide excellent server based virus scanning with Exchange's AVAPI.

As far as Spam filtering, there's several good spam filters you can install right on an Exchange server natively. Brightmail, for instance, integrates nicely with Exchnage's SMTP service. No need for Sendmail. Or, if you're a big enough company - you might go with an appliance like Ironmail or Ironport.

As far as having an MCSE - I'd have thought you would have figured out by now that it doesn't mean much. I don't have one. Yet I manage to run Exchange and AD systems just fine.

If you can't see past the hazy glass of 'I hate Microsoft' that you're looking though, I don't know what to tell you. Microsoft has some shitty software, and some buggy software, and IE sucks. But Exchange doesn't.

Re:Don't worry about this jackass

[cbreaker]

I don't see Outlook as being much more complicated then past versions. Care to elaborate? If anything, Outlook 2003 has greatly enhanced the user experience with a much needed UI update. But there's really nothing new in any of the "2003" office components versus Office XP, or even Office 2000.

I would love to see an OSS replacement for Exchange. A *real* replacement, not a POP3/IMAP server with Squirrelmail and an NNTP server. I said in another post that I believe Evolution and KMail are very nice e-mail clients and with the right work on the server side, would be total Exchange/Outlook replacements. The client side is there, but there's simply no Exchange equal.

I'd love to see a Visio replacement, too. I was rather upset when Microsoft purchased Visio corp, because that meant absolutely zero chance for a non-windows version.

Re:Don't worry about this jackass

[Amouth]

oh i agree they can be cluster fucks.. but also look how many versions you where jumping.. and far more has changed to the fact that 2003 requires active directory and nt4 can't even connect to it..

our policy is to step to the next version after the first service pack. so it has been realitivly to move

Re:Don't worry about this jackass

[Anonymous Coward]

"I think a client like Evolution or even KMail could bring a lot to the table..."

I'd say KMail DO bring a lot to the table. I don't use Microsoft products at all, but if the greatest and finest from Exchange/Outlook is "respond to invitations personally and/or have that automatically update meetings and tasks", it is about a year Kmail (well, Kontact, to tell the truth) can do that: I have my mail integrated with my calendar and todos, autoanswering invitations (only if I really want to autoanswer), events that can launch *any* scripted answer (be it e-mail or other)...

Although I already said I'm not a Microsoft user, I do see others using that magical Exchange+Outlook combination, and I am not impressed at all. Whatever they show me, I've been doing it for quite a time, and then quite a lot more things I don't see Outlook doing (like auto-ordering incoming mails by any header being able to use regular expressions, auto-including answers on the same folder the incoming message was stored, deleting messages after a certain time period, definable by folder and depending on the incoming mail being read or not, easy backup/restore of Mailfolders, compatibility with quite a lot of mail readers webmail/heavy graphics/limited bandwidth phone lines, server side filtering...).

Re:Don't worry about this jackass

[killjoe]

"If you can't see past the hazy glass of 'I hate Microsoft' that you're looking though, I don't know what to tell you. Microsoft has some shitty software, and some buggy software, and IE sucks. But Exchange doesn't."

Notice I simply reported my experience and you accuse me of hating MS. This is the problem with you MS cultists. Your zealotry prevents you from perceiving reality. The rality is that me, the 300 other employees of my last company and millions of people all over the world have had aweful experiences with not only exchange but also windows.

All your worshipping at the altar of Bill G isn't going to negate our experience.

Re:Don't worry about this jackass

[AK Marc]

The rality is that me, the 300 other employees of my last company and millions of people all over the world have had aweful experiences with not only exchange but also windows.

That's just plain funny. I've administered Exchange servers for medium companies (100+) and assisted with large companies (1000+). It was pretty darned simple and straight forward. Most "Exchange" complaints were email complaints in general. People open viruses and blame Exchange. People have Outlook to preview executables and blame Exchange. People type in the wrong address and blame Exchange. People work for companies with incompetent email administrators and blame Exchange. The only time I've ever had trouble with Exchange is when installing 3rd party apps on it, like filters and scanners.

Aside from OWA, Exchange 5.5 is one of the most stable and robust email applications. The level of shared emails, the ability to open multiple boxes with folder-by-folder security, shared calendar, forms, signatures, and all that. I liked 5.5 more than 2000, and I haven't had much to do with 2003. I've worked with Groupwise and various thinner programs that are more like smtp only programs, and nothing had the level of features of Exchange 5.5, except for the programs that added more bugs than features (like Exchange 2000).

Re:Don't worry about this jackass

[killjoe]

This brings me back. It takes a rocket scientist to make exchange work properly. In my company two MSCEs could not keep it going. Maybe that's because it was exchange 2000. So maybe we are both right. Maybe exchange 2000 is a worthless pile of heap.

Re:Don't worry about this jackass

[jpickett]

Agreed. Our OS, logs, and data are all on seperate drives. If you try and combine them, you're crazy. Exchange is very disk I/O heavy, as should be expected. I guess he'd just prefer to have his store.exe play swap games to disk ;-)

Re:Don't worry about this jackass

[cbreaker]

The Exchange 5.5/NT4 to Windows 2000/Exchange 2000 was a very difficult move for many admins. AD is new, Exchange 2000 is new, and they are not compatible with Exchange 5.5 and NT4. They included the ADC for migration, which is basically just an LDAP sync tool with some extra goodies for Exchange directory information.

The ADC is actually very good, but you really need to understand how it works and how to deploy it properly. It's most definately not a simple procedure and the documentation has a lot to be desired.

Hell No

[DesScorp]

You're going to get advice to just use MS Small Business Server....

No...don't do it. Yeah, the price is attractive, with everything in one box. But the problem is that a lot of the things in SBS are crippled, and as one consultant put it, "SBS is a Frankenstein of complexity underneath". And if you're getting the version with SQL, you have to buy hardware and memory that's so beefy, you could have bought two inexpensive servers otherwise (unless you like your network and mail to crawl). SBS limits what you can do with your network. It's the same old Microsoft story...they've come up with a model for doing things, great, but if that model doesn't fit how you do things, then you're screwed. Want to run a website locally? If you do it on SBS, you're opening your whole network up to those dangers that come with that territory. Want Outlook Web Access? Same thing. That's the problem with server consolidation in general, and SBS in particular. You've got all this great stuff in one box, but if the box goes down, everything goes down.

If you're dead-set on SBS, than use a web and mail hosting service, and get a box with dual processors and lots of memory. And I mean Lots.

Re:Hell No

[Anonymous Coward]

We use SBS standard, and are just at the point where we're thinking about getting away from it (getting the 'proper' versions of all the packages).

Now, the main limitation of SBS is that you can only have 1 domain with no subs, and the 16Gb email limit (which is going up to 75Gb in Exchange SP2, btw). Also you have the limitation of running all on one box, and as you point out (and I heartily agree with) you have the problem of opening up your server to the outside world (although it's not *too* much of a problem with a decent firewall, but still...).

The point is, a small company **that isn't expecting to grow much** doesn't need much else - a decent Xeon with 1Gb RAM will run SBS quite happily. Also, you can have additional servers on the domain - but no more domain controllers.

The main difficulty is - as we are finding - migrating OFF the damn thing; because you can only have 1 DC, you can't plan for high availability, and it doesn't support an advanced network infrastructure (DMZ, front/backend Exchange boxes, etc). You can buy a 'transition pack' from MS, but frankly the licensing complications scare me far more than the technical concerns :p

Re:Hell No

[Anonymous Coward]

We use SBS for here at our HQ and SBS at each if the independent franchises - I'm embarrassed to say it actually works quite well. I'm no MS guru so I have another company (expert in SBS) set up and manage the servers. One of our franchisees had someone else (read: family member) setup their SBS and it has been problematic from day one.

So you quate "a consultant" who says "SBS is a Frankenstein of complexity underneath" But so is any system or technology you do not fully understand. Hell that's how I felt when I did my first Linux install... but over time and through research and reading the manuals ones understanding increases.

Knowledge is the power thet overcomes fear.

If you are going to setup SBS do your homework, oh yeah in SBS the wizards are your friends - use them.
For me SBS has been amazingly reliable and no you don't need massive amounts of HW our offices have up to 20 users, some using OWA etc.. it's all about how you set it and your related infrastructure up. Yep it is a 1 box solution the HW dies and no-one (in that office) does any work.
But it is a trade off.

SBS is the first M$ product that has worked better for me than expected.
As for it being crippled I havn't found SBS to be limiting our business at all. Sure there is a 75 user limit and only one DC allowed but for us it is an excellent fit.

Horse for courses.

Anonymous Coward

They forgot OpenExchange

[trelony]

http://www.openexchange.com/

Lotus Notes

[obdulio]

Lotus Notes is a great groupware tool. It's server runs in Unix/Linux, but the client is Windows-only (runs fine under wine).

This is weird, since Lotus Notes belongs to IBM.

Re:Lotus Notes

[Phil John]

The reason lotus notes doesn't run (natively) on linux is that the codebase is apparently a tangled mess of hacks upon hacks upon internally created libraries upon more hacks upon the main codebase. It's a big problem for IBM to add features, let alone modularise and cross-platformise the code.

Re:Lotus Notes

[Dagupan]

The reason Lotus Notes client doesn't run natively in Linux is that they never bothered to port the client over.

There IS an AIX version of the Notes client. AIX is an IBM version of *nix... There has a native Linux port of Notes/Domino Server, however since the release of R5.

Don't spread your misinformed opinions ("tangled mess of hacks") as facts.

Notes vs Outlook - new users

[Anonymous Coward]

Greater than 80% of all _new_ Notes users are already familiar with Outlook/Exchange and are being pushed into the Lotus world from a corporate network that's trying to migrate away from MS Exchange/Outlook crack. All of these firms that believed IBM's propaganda about Lotus being a viable alternative to MS have discovered that in their decision to switch to Lotus, that they jumped out of the frying pan and into the fire.

Active Directory integration? Just use SJS!

[ikewillis]

Need AD integration? Just use the Sun Java System Messaging Server in conjunction with the Sun Java System Directory Server. From the SJS Messaging Server data sheet:

The Java System Messaging Server is a key component of the Java System Communications software portfolio, which also includes the Java System Calendar Server and Java System Instant Messaging plus the Java System Synchronization tool and the Java System Connector for Microsoft Outlook. Integration across these products enables features such as calendar event and task deadline reminders as well as offline forwarding of alerts.

Just use that in conjunction with the SJS Directory Server's identity synchronization with Windows AD environments and you're money.

No-nonsense e-mail for the large corporation

[cbreaker]

And for the small ones. Exchange is very easy to use, but if you don't know how it works you can dig yourself pretty deep.

For the large corporation, you can support an unlimited amount of users with Exchange server. Yes, unlimited. All sharing the same address books, calendars, folders, tasks, etc. And it Just Works. With the right planning and deployment, maintaining an Exchange system can be a very easy thing to do.

I'm sorry, but anyone that says Exchange Server sucks is ignorant. The same people that are zealots about (insert OS/Software/Hardware here.) And usually, it's the same people that have never worked as an administrator/engineer for a large (6,000+ users) company.

Re:No-nonsense e-mail for the large corporation

[Master of Transhuman]

"Exchange is very easy to use, but if you don't know how it works you can dig yourself pretty deep."

"With the right planning and deployment, maintaining an Exchange system can be a very easy thing to do."

What's wrong with this picture?

Re:No-nonsense e-mail for the large corporation

[coronaride]

What's wrong with this picture?

You're opening your mouth, that's what's wrong. If you got your head out of your Microsoft-bashing ass for a moment, you'd understand what the poster was saying. Like most things, it's easy to get started with a product but, if you don't know what you're doing, you can easily botch things up when you start dinking around. And like most things, if you get a good game plan and some good advice, you can make Exchange do somersaults for you.

Re:No-nonsense e-mail for the large corporation

[Master of Transhuman]

And you obviously have no grasp of the English language.

On the one hand, the idiot claims Exchange is easy.

In the same breath, he says you have to know what you're doing.

When Linux fans claim the same thing, the Microsoft shills - like yourself - foam at the mouth.

Try shutting your mouth so the foam doesn't leak all over your keyboard.

There ARE NO EASY Microsoft products - period.

Re:No-nonsense e-mail for the large corporation

[coronaride]

haha...your childish ignorance eases my mind about job security.

What's not intuitive?

[Anonymous Coward]

Or at least, what in the above collection of apps is less intuitive than the Windows counterparts? I find it hard to believe that anyone who uses MS Office, Outlook, and Internet Explorer would have much trouble with OpenOffice.org, Mozilla Thunderbird, and Mozilla FireFox.

Re:What's not intuitive?

[soundvessel]

The Mozilla projects are fairly straight forward, especially Firefox. Thunderbird has a long way to go in terms of features and functionality, integration with Sunbird, and all of that; but overall I use it over Outlook. Open Office is missing functionality, some ease of use. My gripes aren't with those so much as "once we get those, we'll get the OS in place", since Linux, I don't care which flavor, suffers from a case of the uglies.

Explaining conflict resolution

[charnov]

"Now, calendaring and conflict resolution over cellphone- I'm not exactly sure what this is about, perhaps you can reply and explain."

Sure. This is just a small example of something that happens many times a day. Someone requests a meeting using specific resources (projectors, laptops, the room, video teleconferencing, etc.) with specific people (could be an established group in the company,eg. sales) at a time and place. All of those pieces are in the Exchange system and when a request is made, all conflicts (that is, if anyone else has scheduled the any of the same people or resources) are brought up and can be resolved. It isn't easy and it took a lot of planning for it all to get in there and it isn't automatic, but the secretaries lives are much easier and staff take it for granted that it "just works" now and get on with making the company money...which is kinda the point. It's all just logistics and most of the costs of doing any kind of business are in getting resources to work together so it's a big deal.

Re:Explaining conflict resolution

[cbreaker]

It's not just a big deal, it's a HUGE deal. At my last contract, I had sometimes five meetings a day for two weeks straight. Yea, it sucked, but it would have sucked a lot more without Outlook and Exchange there to help organize my schedule, collaborate with the others via updates to meetings and e-mails to explain.

There's other scheduling systems out there, but none of them integrate with e-mail like Exchange/Outlook does.

how to move a file...

[Anonymous Coward]

I've never had a need to try #2 but #1 is very easy to do in Mozilla on Windows. This is how I "backup" my mail:

1. move message from inbox to local inbox.
2. copy local inbox file to another location using filemanager (actually I have a batch file now)

If you don't know where your files are on the hard drive try looking at your profile's settings.

If you still can't figure it out try going to Mozilla.org and reading some FAQs. (hint: "backing up your profile").

If you want to make it real easy, point your Mozilla profile to "C:\data\mozilla" or similar so that you don't have deal with Microsoft's burying data files a dozen levels down in your user profile. ... and yes, I use File Manager from NT4 on Windows 2000. I dislike Windows Explorer.

Shared address book.

[shic]

I've recently been amazed at how poor non-exchange systems are at managing shared address books. While I'm mostly pleased with Thunderbird, I am absolutely astounded that there is no way to update LDAP records from the address book.

Does anyone have a workable solution - or is this the biggest reason for corporate users to stick with Exchange?

Re:Shared address book.

[rtorkian]

I second that emotion. Has anybody besides the big boys paid much attention to how address books and shared contacts work? In making them seamless when accessed via the web or a client? It sure doesn't seem like it.

Replacing Exchange isn't the real problem

[Jim Conley]

I just finished an article for Redmond magazine on this subject that was published in July - considering it came out very pro OSS groupware, I was fairly surprised it made print. Admitted, it did get listed as 'opinion'... I'm also a longtime MAPI programmer and have a pretty solid understanding of how Outlook and Exchange work and don't work. Being polite, ever since MS added 'security features' in Outlook that gorked thousands of custom groupware solutions (some with very large corporations)I've been looking for anything OSS that can replicate the functionality of Outlook and Exchange. Guess what - it still doesn't exist and probably never will. The problem isn't finding an Exchange replacement - it's finding a client that can speak to your Exchange replacement. A client, not a web interface, but a full-featured PIM client. I know, web interfaces are a lot more robust than they used to be but it's still not the same as a native app. 95% of the work in an Outlook/Exchange environment is being done client side. Google MAPI and TNEF and you should get a sense of situation. You'll find many OSS groupware vendors give the server away for next to nothing but charge for the Outlook connector because a) it takes a hell of a lot of work to spoof Exchange to a level that Outlook will believe and b) it's a great revenue source. One of the biggest problems is there are now at least a dozen OSS Exchange replacements of widely varying quality. IMHO, there is still not a single product that will adequately replace a power-user combo of Outlook and Exchange, yet. Unfortunately, by the time OSS groupware gets it together, Exchange as we know it probably won't really exist anymore. The next version is sounding very modular and will be moving away from the traditional monolithic structure. OSS Exchange replacements are, in general, slavish half-ass replicas of Exchange rather than innovative products because that's what the market wants. The problem with hanging off the tiger's tail is that when the bastard changes direction you really get sent flying. As some other posters have mentioned, Hula is very exciting and not just because of jwz's essay 'Groupware Bad' (which really belongs next to esr's 'the cathedral and the bazaar' in some future anthology). Nat Friedman (of evolution fame and now working for Novell) is one of the people behind Hula and I suspect Evolution may be back burner while effort goes into improving the Hula web interface. Final speculation - Novell has an OSS client and an OSS groupware server. They also have Groupwise, perennial #3 in the groupware wars which runs quite comfy on Linux and Windows and has the same mail server under the hood as Hula. Wouldn't it be interesting if Groupwise made the transition to open source as well?

Note about CommuniGate Pro

[hogans-hero]

While the focus of this article is on Groupware products, CommuniGate Pro is unique in that it is scalable to millions of users. It also broke the SpecMail record. Read more here.

Re:Note about CommuniGate Pro

[MarinoHay]

Byte and Switch also reported on the SPECmail news and emphasized CommuniGate Pro's scalability and performance: http://www.byteandswitch.com/document.asp?doc_id=7 9042&WT.svl=wire2_1

Hula isn't even finished yet.

[IGnatius T Foobar]

Why bother with Hula when it isn't even close to being finished yet? If a standalone open source groupware server is what you want, try Citadel, which does today much of what Hula is only promising to do at some arbitrary point in the future.

Re:Hula isn't even finished yet.

[Anonymous Coward]

Remember, it's based on an existing codebase (Netmail) that Novell opened, so most of the functionality is already present. So it *is* usable, even if not recommended for production yet.

Re:Hula isn't even finished yet.

[IGnatius T Foobar]

So it *is* usable, even if not recommended for production yet.

Quite true. It does, however, seem quite inappropriate to give so much airtime to a project whose status is somewhat in flux, when there are half a dozen credible alternatives shipping today that solve many of the same problems.

For open source groupware, try Citadel.

[IGnatius T Foobar]

These articles always seem to leave out credible open source groupware systems such as Citadel. It's a wonderfully complete system that does all of the usual tasks (mail, calendar, contacts, tasks, etc.). It also has a knack for connecting people together in real time, and includes a mini instant messenger and a chat system. One of the nice things about Citadel is that all of the data stores are built-in; you don't have to configure an external IMAP server and an external database server. It's very easy to install.

In theory, you are correct

[brokeninside]

But as a matter of practicality, that extra time will not be used productively.

Aside from which, most of the people using Exchange will be salaried workers, not hourly workers. In which case, giving a few additional minutes per week has no financial impact to the corporation.

Not to mention that the article claims that most of these solutions provide all the features of Outlook that are commonly used. Your argument only applies to corporations that use features that are not present in a replacement. Most companies simply don't leverage Exchange to its fullest.

Alternative for Windows?

[Bellum Aeternus]

What I really want/need is a good alternative for Windows Server. Exchange sucks, pure and simple. In fact, it's so bad that everyone has noticed and my company can move off of it... if we can find a suitable solutiuon.

Now, the executives still love their Windows, so a platform change is out. What's out there for Windows that does everything Exchange does without the nightmare crashes, viruses, and general meltdowns?

Re:Alternative for Windows?

[Anonymous Coward]

Face it, big companies just LOVE their Windows AD domains, and all the GUI tools to work with them, they almost never have to touch a command line, text editor, and with the famed VBSCRIPT(gotta love the security holes)) it just makes login scripts SOOO MUCH easier than a BASH script, or hell, even a python, PHP, or other language. It's all about ease of use and setup.

MOD PARENT UP

[Anonymous Coward]

I work at an ISP and my experience exactly mirrors this person's. When a new virus hits, all customer exchange servers go down (or become unresponsive).

Also annoying is the way exchange rewrites mail headers so you can't tell which client the sender used.

And the way it replaces non-delivery-reports with actual content (550 mailbox full) with its own non-descriptive error: (Failed to deliver message.)

Re:replying to a sig

[Dot.Com.CEO]

If you're Portuguese how come your spelling is Brasilian?

"Dactilografar" not "datilografar".

Groupware, open source, OS X, and everything else

[rtorkian]

This topic is very close to my heart.

I'm the sole IT guy at a medium-sized nonprofit. We're currently using a POP3 provider for email and need a better solution, which is a bit harder because we're all-OS X. Outlook isn't an option, Entourage support for exchange isn't 100% there, exchange is overkill for us anyways, and I have zero Windows Server/Exchange admin experience. (*NIX all the way here...)

I've been seriously researching and demoing MANY solutions for the better part of a year and I've pretty much settled on:

--Communigate Pro for Email, with either Apple Mail (most likely) or Entourage as an IMAP client. (Currently using Entourage for POP3.)

--Meeting Maker for calendaring and to-do. It has a native OS X client and good web access.

--A hand-built web interface to the shared files on our OS X server.

We just need the basics--calendar, shared contacts, email, remote access to shared files--and they need to be rock-solid stable.

Basically, Hula Server is *exactly* what I need, and I think it's what a LOT of SMB's need too. And indeed, there are rumors that it'll be rolled into future OS X server releases.

Unfortunately I need a solution now, and while Hula is just not ready for serious production use. I can see moving to Hula down the road when it's proven and even more kickass.

My Fav

[Anonymous Coward]

Keiro MailServer 6 is my favorite Exhange alt. it runs on Windows and Linux, has shared folders, notes, calanders, tasks, contacts, etc., webmail, and can even integrate it's user database with Microsoft Active Directory or Apple Open Directory. And as E-mails are in flat files one e-mail can't corrupt the entire store. It's easy to administer, and is just a great program IMHO.

More CGP information - BIASED

[azdio]

I am admittedly biased as I am directly connected to CommuniGate Systems. While Groupware and Scalability are interesting, what is really amazing is we're also delivering an integrated and powerful Voice over IP applications with CommuniGate Pro that includes Software PBX, Media Server, and a fully featured NAT traversing SIP server. Most of this available in the new development branch (5.0c1). We have 2 development branches (somewhat BSD-like): current and stable.

A download is available in a fully functional version except for a few limitations:

http://communigate.com/content/download.htm

We are running a coding contest for Voice applications on our easy to use development environment:

http://communigate.com/cgpl-contest

The product manual will help if anyone would like to try these applications:

http://communigate.com/communigatepro

BTW, this software runs and is supported on thirty-something platforms.

And a single google search makes you the expert?

[cbreaker]

Give me a break.

If I do a query for "Linux Problem" I get millions of results. That must mean Linux is unstable and shitty too, huh?

Go ORACLE

[mattspammail]

Oracle's Collaboration Suite

If you're an Oracle shop, you might want to investigate this one.

Yes, I realize that that free solutions exist, but some organizations are willing to/prefer to go with commercial software solutions.

Next version of Notes is Eclipse-based

[FooAtWFU]

Yes, Notes works in Linux under WINE (but you probably shouldn't bother, it's not worth it- even on my 3Ghz box with 2 gigs of RAM it barely manages a crawl). The next version of Notes is apparently going to be based off Eclipse and SWT and all those shiny Java things, however. Google for Lotus Notes Hannover for more details. It looks shiiiiiiiny.

Re:Groupware, open source, OS X, and everything el

[rainer_d]

Open-Xchange.org
There's a tutorial for installing it on OSX, too, I think.

OCS is the worst groupware server ever

[Anonymous Coward]

OCS is the worst email system I've ever been forced to endure. It's Outlook integration, while it seems to work ok at first light, is very flaky. Stuff will just quite working for no reason. The server admin is horrible. This email system was designed to be ran by Oracle admins. If you don't have an Oracle DBA on staff, I would stay very far away from this. Even with an Oracle DBA I still wouldn't touch this piece of junk. Only 6 more months until we can jump back to Exchange, I can't wait. OCS may work ok as a plain old mail server, but a stable groupware server it aint. BTW, another groupware system that's cheap and looks good is Kerio. Never ran it in production though.

fetchmail only makes sense with POP

[aurelian]

The whole point of IMAP is that by keeping the mail on an IMAP server---and keeping track of read/unread status etc---it can be read from multiple clients at multiple locations.

I suppose you could use fetchmail or something similar to get the mail off the Exchange server and onto an IMAP server.. might have to look into that if our IT dept goes the Exchange route.

Re:fetchmail only makes sense with POP

[Jake Dodgie]

Exchange is an IMAP server, just point thunderbird at it as an IMAP, you get folders and all, can copy what you want to another Thunderbird profile etc, It's how i move mail off Exchange all the time.

Agreed -- it's awesome. But Palm connectivity?

[nlh]

This article appeared about two weeks after I went through the same decision process for my small (3 active users) office setup, and I too decided on Communigate Pro. Once you get a hang of it, it's incredibly easy, powerful, and useful.

I've gotten it working to a point of satisfaction now, but the only thing I feel the setup is missing is some type of Palm/PDA integration. Because the Communigate MAPI Connector for Outlook isn't 100% native Outlook, many of the popular (and more powerful) Palm calendar apps out there (Keysuite & BeyondContacts, in particular), are unable to connect to folders/calendars/tasks that reside on the Communigate Server.

This is a big problem, since we need to be able to access the shared data while on the road.

Anyone have any ideas (or, in particular, have any direct experience with solving such a problem?)

The closest I've come to a solution is to hire an outside firm to build a "folder sync tool" for Outlook -- essentially something that will mirror the shared (server-based) folders with local (PST-based) personal folders, which the Palm can sync with. Figure it'll cost about $1000 to build the utility, but it's well worth it if it works.

Linux License

[Anonymous Coward]

You need a license to run linux??? Gay.

Right approach?

[Anonymous Coward]

Rather than fixating on exchange would another approach be to come at the problem from two fronts?
Messaging: all sorts of mail/news/directory stuff out there.
Collaboration: wikis, webDAV, even-svn (share & version control docs)
Maybe the two meet, maybe they don't...

Re:replying to a sig

[big.iron.wiz]

... because i am very poor at spelling.

Re:Hula - usual Open Source problems

[blackpaw]

Looked interesting, then spent hours trying to install before getting pissed off:

Despite running exactly the same systems as the install instructions (Mandrake Official 10.1):

Install instructions assume you are building & installing as root.

Install from Source Tarball
- Configure failed with dozens of aclocal errors
- So no makefile ..

Install from SVN trunk
- Same as tarball

Goody - there's a RPM for Mandrake 10.1 !
- Bummer, the linked download site no longer exists.

Lets search the user or developer mail archives for info
- Oh yeah - they're not searchable

Screw this. Back to exchange.

MOD PARENT DOWN

[cbreaker]

You can easily see the standard SMTP headers on every single message right in Outlook (View > Options, Anyone?)

As far as NDR's - there IS NO STANDARD NDR. Every mail server has it's own. If a message is accepted by a remote mail server, and then generates an NDR and sends it back, Exchange/Outlook will display the message as it was received. If the message was REJECTED by the remote mail server, Exchange actually present very GOOD NDR messages. Have you actually LOOKED at one? Right at the end, you'll see something like this:

------------------

The following recipient(s) could not be reached:

          user@domain.net on 8/4/2005 9:10 PM
                        The e-mail account does not exist at the organization this message was sent to. Check the e-mail address, or contact the recipient directly to find out the correct address.
                        ( eastrmmtao06.cox.net #5.1.1 smtp; 550 (user@domain.net)... User not known)

------------------
See the end? That's the part where Exchange is telling you EXACTLY what happened: The remote server, eastrmmtao06.cox.net gave an SMTP error 550, with the data User not known.

Sorry man, but you really don't know what you're talking about.

Re:Hula - usual Open Source problems

[blackpaw]

Hooray for google. Searched on hula and aclocal problems and google found a link in the hula mail archive which solved it. Needed to change automake to 1.7 (from 1.4)

I remember running into these issues on mandrake 9.x, I surprised they're still there. Unfortunaetly I also remember upgrading automake broke other configure scripts.

Ah well - thats Linux for you - swapped DLL hell for configure hell.

Egroupware and Kolab

[LibrePensador]

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.

HAH

[GoClick]

Apparently you've never tried a large scale migration of non-technical staff to OopenOffice.org. Not only are they afraid of change and they can't put two and two together to get four and figure out if one part of a program works one way the rest should to. But it lacks TONs of features that Office has, good ones too not stupid ones and working with outside data in OopenOffice.org is crap too, no where as easy as Office 2003

Even with a roseta stone people can't figure out how to get by, too many advanced things in OopenOffice.org take too many steps the net betas are better but still not even close to Microsoft Office.

And I still hate Microsoft...

Oooo I'm praising Office I must be a troll!