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Exchange Alternatives Round-up

Posted by Hemos on from the good-news-for-the-it-set dept.

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."

14 of 365 comments (clear)

  1. Active Directory integration? by charnov · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

    --
    [RIAA] says its concern is artists. That's true, in just the sense that a cattle rancher is concerned about its cattle.
    1. Re:Active Directory integration? by Noaccess0 · · Score: 5, Interesting

      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.

    2. Re:Active Directory integration? by b0bby · · Score: 4, Interesting

      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.

  2. Replaces the meeting room by charnov · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

    --
    [RIAA] says its concern is artists. That's true, in just the sense that a cattle rancher is concerned about its cattle.
    1. Re:Replaces the meeting room by Red+Flayer · · Score: 3, Interesting

      "...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.

      --
      "Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
  3. How about alternatives to Outlook? by helicologic · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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?

    1. Re:How about alternatives to Outlook? by HrothgarReborn · · Score: 3, Interesting

      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 :)

  4. Oracle Collaboration Suite by ataX · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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.

  5. Groupware never got anybody laid... by defile · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

  6. Re:All too big - Hula is a better way to move by bad_outlook · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

    --
    bad_outlook
    --
    Is this vague enough for you?
  7. what about kolab? by RelliK · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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/

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    ___
    If you think big enough, you'll never have to do it.
  8. Re:GroupWise? by Dr.Zong · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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. ;)

    --

    Party?!? What kind of party is this? Where's the damn keg?
    Virtus Junxit Mors Non Separabit
  9. Re:They forgot about ExchangeIt by glesga_kiss · · Score: 3, Interesting
    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.

  10. Replacing Exchange isn't the real problem by Jim+Conley · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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?