Slashdot Mirror
Mozilla and Google — Exchange Killers At Last?
phase_9 writes "The latest version of Mozilla Thunderbird may still only be in beta but already the user community have started creating an extensive set of viable Exchange killers. One such example is the latest mashup between Thunderbird and Google Calendars, providing bi-directional syncing of calendar information from both the client and internet. How long will it be before open-source software can provide a complete, accessible office suite for a fraction of the cost that Microsoft current imposes?"
"One such example is the latest mashup between Thunderbird and Google Calendars [CC], providing bi-directional syncing of calendar information from both the client and internet. How long will it be before open-source software can provide a complete, accessible office suite for a fraction of the cost that Microsoft current impose?"
When Google builds an appliance that can host the apps locally. I am not going to put my companies email on a Google server across the Internet. Google needs to wake up and build an appliance that can be hosted locally within the bounds of a company's perimeter.
I used to hate webmail. Thunderbird (Netscape mail before this) was a staple on my desktop. Today, I hate mail apps. Why have a mail app using resources when your browser is open already and webmail (today) works great already?
I have Outlook/Exchange at work, but I use Firefox/OWA instead.
If my browser is open, I prefer to use it.
next generation PIM suites should be the goal, which exchange falls far short of.
is anyone from the Chandler (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chandler_(PIM)) team looking into integrating efforts here?
Um... really. I think an enormous percentage of those using the full Microsoft Office suite (with Exchange etc) would disagree with you.
There's nothing out there that can match the usability of Exchange/Office. It's a sad reality, because Exchange/Office is fucking expensive.
"It is possible to commit no errors and still lose. That is not a weakness. That is life." -Peak Performance
Yes, until Google offers an in-house version of their tools (a server that sits at my office) my business won't move to Google. Despite how much I like it.
I need to know that my businesses information is confidential. And, by having it sit at Google just it isn't.
Plus, even with businesses where confidentially is desired but optional, you have plenty of businesses where it is not optional but legal required (lawyer, doctor, etc.). Legally they don't even have the option of using Google's tools.
Doesn't google for domains (Google Apps) allow for exactly this type of thing....?
Google may not be an open source company like Mozilla, but they have historically been much more supportive to open efforts. Open API's are only one example. Think about Google's summer of code, or the open-sourcing of the Google Web Toolkit.
TFA is a bit premature. Thunderbird's calendar has quite a way to go before it'll become a serious threat to anything. This is nothing against Thunderbird (it's been my mail client for years) or the calendar project, just an observation that they are pretty early along with calendars and the UI still doesn't fit really well with the application.
--Pat
If you want to kill Exchange as a product, you have to make a clone, not a replacement. This is how we got $500 PCs only a few years after a time when three manufacturers sold them for $2500 each. First they made a clone, and then they branched out. If you make an Exchange clone, Microsoft should welcome the competition as it's good for the economy as a whole. I'm not anti-Microsoft by any stretch, but I like the "people power" of Open Source Software and the added security, comfort and conscience-free use it brings.
Anti-Globalism
Since when is Google "open source"?
Open-source friendly, undoubtedly. Less secretive about (some of their) proprietary code than Microsoft? Sure, though that's not saying much. There's only so much secrecy obfuscated Javascript can buy you, so it's not as if they had much choice. Still, kudos to them for not only accepting that fact, but providing official APIs to some of their services.
But "open source"? Show me where I can go to submit patches to any of their core products, and maybe then I'll agree to that term. Until then, Thunderbird + Google Calendars is no more "open source" than Evolution + Exchange.
SIERRA TANGO FOXTROT UNIFORM
Google is an advertising company. So long as it gets people to go to Google's sites and (theoretically) view the ads, its feasible for Google to do it. If open-sourcing their work will increase the people who use it (and see ads) - why the bloody hell not? There's more ways of making money then locking your customers out of the full use of the product they purchased.
"A witty saying proves nothing." - Voltaire
Company mail system is also, believe it or not, used to send mail within the same company/building. ... even rarely travel outside.
Strangely the most confidential documents such as analysis, internal white papers, usecase for next product
Also, there is a difference between having the risk of being intercepted by a third party than storing your mail directly on the third party servers. Especially when the third party tells you upfront that they do content analysis of your mail.
The fact that most people get it backward is that they don't care if anybody else read the mail about their last vacations. However company don't like their trade secret being hosted by their competitor.
We run Evolution at work, and it sucks. It is not stable and does not handle even simple calendaring properly. There are more bugs in it than at a cockroach farm.
I say that and I am sorry, because I love open source, but Evolution is something only a mother can love.
There are great solutions out there for cheap or for free that replace a lot of functionality of Outlook/Exchange. The problem is, compatibility to migrate and user adoption.
The compatibility to migrate is: you can't just copy the data from one server to another because of it's proprietary layout. It was a bad choice in the past and it's now rearing it's ugly head.
The other, user adoption is simple: people don't like change. I've been fired before because I implemented changes in security according to SoX! That company still is not SoX compliant and won't be for a long time, just because the policy changes (disabling auto-login on workstations, locking up after the workday, separating and securing financially sensitive data) are not according to what users want. And it's not the end-user drones, they will accept ANY change, it's the middle-management, people that have been there for 30+ years, micromanaging 10 people, and don't want to change because that would imply that they will actually have to manage something.
I have my personal e-mail and calendar on IMAP, have done it for years. It works on my Mac, Windows, Linux and it works on any system I come. I just point my mailbox to the server and point my calendar to another IMAP folder. Most clients support iCal (Outlook, SharePoint etc. also use iCal, just the wrapper to store it and server-client communication is proprietary). I have implemented similar solutions and it all works, they have shared calendars, e-mail and all the works you can get from Exchange it's open so they can change systems whenever they want, it's cheaper than Exchange and requires less resources.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
Until my colleague can send me an invite, and I can click on yes/no/maybe, and it goes into my calender, and it gets synched to my mobile phone, thanks but no thanks. There is going to be an opportunity to beat Exchange the day phones and PDA's are hardwareabstracted in the OS and a cross-brand, unified API for synching is available. Today, Outlook IS the API.
10 ?"Hello World" life was simple then
I wish I had my mod points :-) +1 Funny for you
(you aren't serious, right?)
I use the "2000" version of some Microsoft products (windows, office/outlook/exchange) at work and "usability" was OK when these products were first launched.
Nowadays, a powerful search feature is essential to me (and probably everyone). I have only 40Mb of mailbox space in my company (a financial institution). So, I have about 20 PST files, one for each "folder" in Inbox tree (you know, if you keep everything in one huge PST file, it will corrupt sooner or later). Did you know Outlook can't do a search in all of these PST's at once? You have to execute the search 20 times, one per PST file... Is this what you call usability (this was the first thing that came to my mind, but I can list others if you want) ?
ilex paraguariensis for all
I don't think we really know what they have given them. If they present a NSL to them, they are unable to even speak about the request.
Bringing liberty to the masses. - http://freetalklive.com/
In order to be succesful Exchange replacement, it has to be Blackberry enabled.
Senior managers, CEOs don't care about the cost saving, they care about their Blackberry.
Ok.. It's buggy. Have you submitted bug reports? Doesn't do any good to gripe about the rain if you're not willing to do something about it.
There is such a thing as users wanting products that just work. Open Source does need participation from the community, but this is not just a strength - it is also a weakness. It isn't reasonable to expect that every user of a product should participate in the testing and development of that product. Products that are intended to be used by a broad user base should be stable products and should not require the end user to have to provide input for product development. Clicking "yes, submit error report" is one thing - having to go out of the way to file an error report is another. So long as the open source community continues to respond to complaints by saying, "You should file a bug report!" or "You should develop a patch!" - so long as this sort of thing takes place, Open Source products will lose. It's completely the wrong attitude for developers to have.
I love my sig.
OK, so there is a lot of talk about creating an Exchange clone, an alternative, and most solutions offering a Linux backend that still allows users to use Outlook and synchronize with MS products.
Isn't this just copying and not creating and real value to innovate? Directly creating a Linux Exchange clone that can talk with Outlook, doesn't that just further strengthen the cause to use MS products for the end-user?
The Linux community should embrace a standard compliant Group Calendar, Addressbook, and Mail - This can be provided completely Web-based without the need for a fat client, especially end users with Outlook. Users can access the product using Firefox, Safari of IE, cross-platform.
Food for thought, embrace a new protocol/product that can offer the features Exchange does, but in a radically new way, without the need to support 'Outlook'
One product that has this vision is @Mail - Keep an eye on the project