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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."
ExchangeIt is another option.
Disclaimer: I used to work there (but not on that product), and I still think that company is really cool.
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.
bad_outlook
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Is this vague enough for you?
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.
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.
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.
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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.
I don't respond to AC's.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
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.
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?
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.
--
# Canmephians for a better Linux Kernel
$Stalag99{"URL"}="http://stalag99.net";
Gotcha. So the answer is, "[Companies] use it because it's Microsoft(TM)." :-)
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
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.
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.
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.
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...
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.
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.
>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
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:
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.
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.
OS Reviews: Free and Open Source Software
Pity they completely overlooked Open-Xchange and its free open source cousin.
Do you really need reason for beer? Wingman Brewers
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.
- It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
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.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
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.
libertarianswag.com
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?
"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?
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
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.
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.
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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.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
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!