Options For Good (Not Expensive) Office Backbone For a Small Startup

Have You Accounted for User Preference? by rsmith84 · 2012-05-23 02:36 · Score: 5, Insightful

What's the global consensus? Is everyone open to outside-the-box solutions? Or do they want the "comfort" and "warm fuzzy feeling" of Microsoft familiarity?

Re:Have You Accounted for User Preference? by hairyfeet · 2012-05-23 02:48 · Score: 4, Insightful

You should be modded up to 11 because THAT is it in a nutshell. Sure you can go cheap, even free, but you ARE going to have a bit of a learning curve and users will have to learn new things as well. If they aren't willing to do this then honestly you really don't have a choice, because if they want it "just like Exchange" well then your only choice is exchange friend, it would be like saying "We want it to be just like photoshop" and then expecting you to pull it off with something like Corel Draw. it just ain't gonna happen unless you have support from on high and the users are willing to learn along with you.
As far as an answer to the question Google apps and Zimbra I've heard good things about but since i know longer do corp I can't tell you how close they are to Exchange. Sadly the best answer I'd found is no longer available, Xandros Server was $500 flat and no user CALs and to the users it felt a hell of a lot like Exchange, they had even bought licenses to a lot of the MSServer APIs so it would function as a member server in a domain. it was about as plug and play with MSFT software as I had ever seen but although their website still exists its just a zombie, the company has been dead since 09.

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Re:Have You Accounted for User Preference? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-23 02:51 · Score: 1

In a small business setting, the only user preference that matters (in the end) is that of the owners. Considering the OP is just a code monkey by day, and his/her organization does not have a full time IT person, supporting multiple options just does not make sense at all, and as the company grows will become a logistical nightmare.
OP - Have you looked into Zimbra?
http://www.zimbra.com/products/
Re:Have You Accounted for User Preference? by cpu6502 · 2012-05-23 02:54 · Score: 1

The users will just say "Microsoft Office" or "Lotus Notes" and those have already been struckout as too costly. QUOTE: "good / cheap / free solution to email, contacts, calendaring and user management in general?"
Mozilla seaMonkey has all of those. Or you could try the individually separate programs of Firefox, Thunderbird, et cetera. Or maybe OPERA which has not only those functions but also online support for storage.

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Re:Have You Accounted for User Preference? by the+eric+conspiracy · 2012-05-23 03:02 · Score: 1

The problem with solutions other the MS Office is that you will have issues with interacting with people outside your company.
Just do the partner thing and go with a barebones MS Office (PP, Word, Excel).
The other stuff can be handled using GMail or an internal IMAP server etc.
Re:Have You Accounted for User Preference? by jimicus · 2012-05-23 03:32 · Score: 2

Google Apps isn't bad; they give you a plugin for Outlook which works quite nicely.
Re:Have You Accounted for User Preference? by mapsjanhere · 2012-05-23 03:42 · Score: 1

I'm in the same position in a small business (so we're no longer a start-up after 10+ years), and after trying the "free" software route for a while I went back to all MS. 90% of the people you hire come "pre-trained" in your typical Office applications, and the savings in training cost (my time and their time) easily pays for the licenses.

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Re:Have You Accounted for User Preference? by Lumpy · 2012-05-23 03:51 · Score: 5, Informative

"The problem with solutions other the MS Office is that you will have issues with interacting with people outside your company."
This old lie again.
No you dont. WE have been on Open Office/Libre Office for over 3 years now here and have ZERO problems "interacting with people outside your company". WE can save as office format and read office format.
In fact we have less problems than one of our customers who is still on Office 2003.

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Re:Have You Accounted for User Preference? by sjames · 2012-05-23 03:56 · Score: 2

There is truth in that, but this is a 10 person startup. 10 Whole people. If they're going to demand enterprise style IT, perhaps working at a startup isn't for them.
Re:Have You Accounted for User Preference? by jellomizer · 2012-05-23 04:23 · Score: 1

Don't forget your customer needs. A lot of these tools are 99% Microsoft office compatible... That means 3 to 4 time a year you will have some issue that will require Microsoft to fix the issue, or the data that you give to your customer just doesn't load right for them.
Telling them that they should try this free software put extra burden on your customers and that isn't good. I am not saying go all out with a Microsoft Solution... But I am stating you should understand the abilities and infrastructure your customers use. As a consideration.
I have seen some rather successful methods where they have one PC with Microsoft Office for conversions and checking, where they RDP into the system to do the final check and cleanup work. Also I have seen companies work fine with OpenOffice/LibreOffice and all open source tools... However these companies tend to have customers with a similar acceptance towards open source and is willing to take the trade off.
Also I would expect you want your company to expand. If so diverging from the big name solutions can get costly as new hires may need more training, on the average a new hire costs the company 150% of their salary compared to the next year , when you calculate initial lack of productivity, and learning the ropes, adding unfamiliar tools may add to this. Also if you try to hire people with a wider set of skills you will need to pay more for them.
I worked at a start-up. I liked to program in Python, we needed more developers, it was tough to find affordable python coders, However there were a bunch of C# programmers, so we switched to C# instead, and we got a bunch of good Developers and a better price.

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Re:Have You Accounted for User Preference? by arbulus · 2012-05-23 04:27 · Score: 1

Precisely. I recently built a network for a surgical center. The owners wanted to keep costs down as much as they could, so i setup LibreOffice and Thunderbird for the users. Every single person there went nuts, calling me, yelling at me, yelling at the owners, wanting "the regular email program", meaning Outlook. Even though Thunderbird is, IMO, far easier to use than outlook, they apparently had no idea whatsoever how to use Thunderbird, even after I tought everyone how to use it. So we had to spend hundreds more dollars to supply each user with a copy of MS Office. User preference is a big deal. Of course, this office is the most computer illiterate bunch of people I have ever encountered in my entire life. So a different crowd might be more welcoming to applications that aren't from Microsoft.
Re:Have You Accounted for User Preference? by Vancorps · 2012-05-23 04:30 · Score: 1

One thing not mentioned is that Microsoft offers hosted Exchange and Office which is significantly easier to afford and maintains that warm fuzzy a lot of people have with the environment. Of course the first question as always is, what platform are most people familiar with already? Odds are they should be the target otherwise you spend a lot of time retraining which may be completely unnecessary.
In terms of a start-up, if you have a funding source they will see it as a reasonable expenditure and feel more comfortable providing more money as they see you doing your best to keep costs which can and does include internal infrastructure. For an organization with 10 users you probably wouldn't need any kind of directory services. OpenLDAP takes a lot more time to setup but the price is right.
Re:Have You Accounted for User Preference? by tlhIngan · 2012-05-23 04:43 · Score: 1

Precisely. I recently built a network for a surgical center. The owners wanted to keep costs down as much as they could, so i setup LibreOffice and Thunderbird for the users. Every single person there went nuts, calling me, yelling at me, yelling at the owners, wanting "the regular email program", meaning Outlook. Even though Thunderbird is, IMO, far easier to use than outlook, they apparently had no idea whatsoever how to use Thunderbird, even after I tought everyone how to use it. So we had to spend hundreds more dollars to supply each user with a copy of MS Office. User preference is a big deal. Of course, this office is the most computer illiterate bunch of people I have ever encountered in my entire life. So a different crowd might be more welcoming to applications that aren't from Microsoft.
Well, the problem is in your first line - "surgical center". Of course they'll be less willing to train because they have other work to do. IT's a necessary evil these days for everything, and users are often forced to use computers because it's a required part of their job.
Of course, the ideal would be for people to want to be well-rounded and learn more about the world around them, but that's not going to happen - from geeks arguing why they should be forced to take arts courses at college/university (just give me the technical courses I need to graduate, I don't care for philosophy/ethics/writing/etc), to other professionals (doctors/nurses/mechanics/lawyers/etc) having to waste time "screwing with the computer" instead of doing their jobs.
And to be honest, most people would rather have a doctor who spends their time keeping up to date on the latest medical advances to one who spends their free time showing off how fast they can build Linux from scratch. Or getting billed for the time the doctor took to rebuild the kernel in the middle of a diagnosis or something because they had to.
Re:Have You Accounted for User Preference? by jellomizer · 2012-05-23 04:54 · Score: 1

Yet...
The amount of problems you get really depends on what you are sending and what your customer needs.
I had experience mostly in terms of Calendar Sharing. Some of it has been fixed. but I randomly got that Calendar Invite that only work in Outlook.
But these problems are smaller now then when I had the bulk of the issues, mostly due to the popularity on Non-Microsoft Cell phones, where you can say I am not using a Microsoft product and not look like you are cheeping out your organization.

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If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Re:Have You Accounted for User Preference? by darrylo · 2012-05-23 05:03 · Score: 1

The easiest is to just go with some hosting solution, as maintaining your own server is going to be a lot of work (upgrades, backups, security issues, etc., etc.).
For hosted solutions, I'd look into either google apps or microsoft's office365. Office365 (maybe $72/user/year) might not be quite as cheap as google's offering ($50/user/year), but it seems to be a surprisingly viable alternative to google apps. The only possible issue that I've found with office365 is that password aging is turned on. Not only do they appear to not emphasize that password aging is turned on, but:
1. They don't give you any warning that the password is about to expire, unless you use the web interface (Outlook, Thunderbird, iOS, and android users appear to be screwed). I think some support doc actually recommends that you manually add a reminder to your calendar.
2. Once the password times out, you are, of course, locked out.
3. You cannot change the timeout interval.
4. While you can turn off password aging, doing so requires the use of a windows box and arcane windows powershell command-line commands. Yes, that's not a typo: powershell commands. Yup, there doesn't appear to be a web interface for this.
Re:Have You Accounted for User Preference? by hawguy · 2012-05-23 05:13 · Score: 3, Informative

"The problem with solutions other the MS Office is that you will have issues with interacting with people outside your company."
This old lie again.
No you dont. WE have been on Open Office/Libre Office for over 3 years now here and have ZERO problems "interacting with people outside your company". WE can save as office format and read office format.
In fact we have less problems than one of our customers who is still on Office 2003.
You must have pretty lightweight document/spreadsheet needs when sharing documents externally. I use Libreoffice at home but regularly need to remote desktop into a Windows machine at work to use MS Office because Libreoffice doesn't always work well with Office documents and spreadsheets. Word Docs aren't always formatted correctly and if I want to print it at home, I need to fix it up, or if I make edits and send it to someone else, they'll sometimes need to fix up the doc. Likewise, many spreadsheets don't even work at all with Libreoffice (for example, I can't complete an expense report spreadsheet required by our Finance Department because none of the macros work). We send and receive documents from external agencies, and I just can't see using LibreOffice to save a document when I don't know what it's going to look like on the other end.
Here's some of the challenges LibreOffice has with MS Office docs:
http://help.libreoffice.org/Common/About_Converting_Microsoft_Office_Documents
If your entire office is on LibreOffice, I can see it working well within the office, but once you start sharing documents with external partners, I'm really surprised you've had zero problems.
Re:Have You Accounted for User Preference? by msobkow · 2012-05-23 05:21 · Score: 1

I'd like to know what perverse little-used function people are talking about, because I and many people I know have used OpenOffice/LibreOffice for years with zero problems. The first release of OpenOffice had some formatting issues, but those were ironed out by the first dot release.
As with the GP, I have seen far more problems with people stuck on Office 2K3 or Office 2K than I have with OpenOffice/LibreOffice.
Oh, wait! Maybe you're one of the people who embeds sound effects in a PowerPoint to the annoyance of everyone in the room...

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I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Re:Have You Accounted for User Preference? by hawguy · 2012-05-23 05:24 · Score: 1

Well, the problem is in your first line - "surgical center". Of course they'll be less willing to train because they have other work to do. IT's a necessary evil these days for everything, and users are often forced to use computers because it's a required part of their job.
The "surgical center" has nothing to do it - surgical center office workers aren't different than those in other industries... it doesn't matter whether he said "warehouse office", "non profit childcare center", or "space center mission control", people in all of those companies all have other work to do, just want to get their job done, and don't want to learn something new.
Re:Have You Accounted for User Preference? by nyquil+superstar · 2012-05-23 05:32 · Score: 2

It's funny. I've done enterprise IT for a good long while. About 13 years. And now I do startups. And the thing that really shocked me was that even the little guys have "enterprise-style" needs. It's kind of funny, really. And the way enterprise IT vendors work, they lock out the little guys. I'm quite suspicious that there is a good market out there for bringing enterprise-level capabilities to small business.
Re:Have You Accounted for User Preference? by butalearner · 2012-05-23 06:23 · Score: 1

I'm in the same position in a small business (so we're no longer a start-up after 10+ years), and after trying the "free" software route for a while I went back to all MS. 90% of the people you hire come "pre-trained" in your typical Office applications, and the savings in training cost (my time and their time) easily pays for the licenses.
It probably depends on a lot of factors like location and the product/service, but I would think in today's job market you could just hire people who are more familiar with non-Microsoft products to avoid the training issue completely. Unfortunately the submitter already works with several other people so it might already be too late for that.
Re:Have You Accounted for User Preference? by mu51c10rd · 2012-05-23 06:49 · Score: 2

Ever work for a plce leaving the startup phase? When that 10 person startup becomes 50 people...there is a collection of random operating systems, applications, and software installed that the larger base now expects to work together. I recommend the hosted Exchange option...it scales nicely if that startup gets large. Google Apps is nice and all, until you get larger and have departments who like their resource scheduling and active sync functionality of Exchange. Migrations are a pain...so I recommend planning to scale from the start.
Re:Have You Accounted for User Preference? by sjames · 2012-05-23 06:53 · Score: 1

If they spend all their bux on software licenses more appropriate to the enterprise, the only transition they will have to worry about is the one from startup to firesale.
Re:Have You Accounted for User Preference? by blakelarson · 2012-05-23 07:17 · Score: 1

I think it's compared to an software or engineering company. Techies like to dick around with these things more than GP's examples and your examples.
Re:Have You Accounted for User Preference? by arbulus · 2012-05-23 07:20 · Score: 1

A large number of my clients are medical offices/facilities that I've been working with for years. Right now, the biggest push is electronic medical records. And let me tell you, it's a nightmare. All of the doctors that I work with are computer illiterate and have no desire to work with computers. But when you go with an EMR system, you're using computers front to back, for every single task. And they balk. It diminishes patient care because the doctors are more worried about making typos and clicking the right boxes, rather than paying attention to the patients. The EMR that the doctors wanted deployed at one particular office required a specific Toshiba tablet for the doctors to use. These things were $2,500 tablets,. And they stopped using them after a month. They hated them because, well firstly they're terrible tablets, and secondly the doctors have no idea how to use a computer. Computer illiteracy in the medical field is a very big problem. Medical workers especially are going to have to become more knowledgeable about computers. They're going to have to be more flexible, and they're going to have to be able to adapt. If you can send an email in Outlook, you can send an email in Thunderbird. Look for "Inbox" to see your messages, look for "Compose" or "Write" or something like that to write a message. It's not difficult. Same with word processors. If you know the basics of one, just look for those things in the other. They're there. With medical increasingly becoming an electronic only field, medical employees (including doctors) are going to have to learn how to adapt.

But not only is computer literacy a problem, but EMR companies are the epitome of vendor lock-in and control. They specialize in holding back features and charging you $10,000 for implementing something incredibly simple and common sense. Data portability is also nearly non-existent. Even with HL7, interacting with other EMRs (and Odin forbid you have to interact with another office or provider), it's still a mess.

The medical field is a mess. The promise of EMR is not being realized. Greed has already destroyed everything good that EMR was supposed usher in, and has instead made a complete and total disaster of the industry. There is no data portability. There is no go-to-one-doctor-and-have-records-easily-transferred-to-another. That's the last thing EMR developers want. Not to mention that everything is harder, slower, and prone to failure. If the power goes out, or the server is down, or if your internet connection is down (a problem with cloud-based EMRs) then you're nearly dead in the water. An office can't function anymore without these things.
Re:Have You Accounted for User Preference? by hawguy · 2012-05-23 07:25 · Score: 1

I think it's compared to an software or engineering company. Techies like to dick around with these things more than GP's examples and your examples.
Even software and engineering companies have administrative assistants, finance people, marketing people and the like that prefer not to dick around with these things.
Sure, a 3 man Linux consulting firm might get away with mandating LibreOffice (until they need to submit a proposal in MS-Word format or open a customer's MS-Word RFP with embedded graphics and AutoShapes), but a 50 person office is going to have a much harder time of it.
Re:Have You Accounted for User Preference? by redmid17 · 2012-05-23 07:33 · Score: 1

You're going to need to redefine the word nicely then. It's seriously one of the biggest pains I've dealt with. The only think going for it is that it will actually take labels and translate them into folders in outlook
Re:Have You Accounted for User Preference? by Anne+Thwacks · 2012-05-23 07:43 · Score: 2

You might want to tell people how to use "Safely Remove USB device"
I have supported OpenOffice since i was Star Office, and LibreOffice today, and I have never ever seen this. We move files between all sorts of machines all the time
I support what others have said - there is far more problem moving between different versions of Word.

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Re:Have You Accounted for User Preference? by jimicus · 2012-05-23 07:55 · Score: 1

Can't say I've had any problems with it but I haven't rolled it out in an attempt to let Google replace Exchange; just let users install on an ad-hoc basis.
What problems have you had?
Re:Have You Accounted for User Preference? by cayenne8 · 2012-05-23 08:38 · Score: 1

Telling them that they should try this free software put extra burden on your customers and that isn't good. I am not saying go all out with a Microsoft Solution... But I am stating you should understand the abilities and infrastructure your customers use. As a consideration.
Well, starting out...have maybe ONE MS computer, with legal copies of office..etc...to use when the opensource you use won't work with that odd document that you just can't open or use with an opensource solution. I'm guessing for a small, startup office that would suffice?

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Re:Have You Accounted for User Preference? by dbIII · 2012-05-23 18:29 · Score: 1

Let's look at what you've put forward:
Semester projects implying you are still an undergraduate student - yet you're a "pro" (at what you don't say) that manages a huge and apparently famous laboratory (we are expected to trust you on this apparently).
Total of two people involved with the problem despite you apparently running a huge and famous laboratory.
Three times in how many years and on something as unreliable as an SD card and you have more than ONE THOUSAND servers that are "yours"?
Those things are fine in themselves, but when you put that up as somehow making yourself more credible than a person that demonstrably supports a large number of computers (instead of apparently being the guy that owns the datacentre - sorry doesn't count if somebody else is running it) it just does not compare even if all of the above is true.
Now we get to the kicker:

I haven't managed to reach your level of zealotry
Am I smelling an agenda at work here? It's starting to look awfully tribal instead of technical and with respect, from the way you've blown your own trumpet about how important you are despite conflicting signal I really don't think we can trust anything you've written above without hearing about it elsewhere.
I've never heard about problems like yours either. Has anybody connected with openoffice development (which I am not) heard of it? Did you bother to tell them?

Sorry, but I would be far more inclined to believe a post that just states your problem as being an example as to why the software is not good enough instead of you telling us that it is no good and we should take your word for it because you are Tony Stark or something.
Good luck with your studies and after you finish you may not want to take up a job writing fiction, people expect it to be a bit more credible.
Re:Have You Accounted for User Preference? by coolmadsi · 2012-05-23 20:59 · Score: 1

Word Docs aren't always formatted correctly and if I want to print it at home, I need to fix it up, or if I make edits and send it to someone else, they'll sometimes need to fix up the doc.
Is this a problem limited to Libre/Open Office, or just Word Docs in general? I have heard about formatting issues when opening a .doc file in a different Office version to the one it was written in.
Out of interest, would sharing documents as PDFs externally be better, or do documents usually need editing externally as well? What about rich text format (.rtf) - editable and opens well enough in Word and Libre/Open Office (last time I checked, anyway). I'm unsure of the limitation of this compared to .doc as whenever I've saved as .rtf it hasn't been a particularly complex document.
Re:Have You Accounted for User Preference? by juggler314 · 2012-05-24 01:04 · Score: 1

I use LibreOffice on my computer while everyone else has MS Office - it's usually not a problem. The one thing Libre sucks at though is PPTs - now this is probably at least 1/2 the fault of the people that make incredible bad PPT's (bad here meaning bad underneath...lets not comment on artistic prowess for now). Opening anything beyond a very basic PPT usually results in terrible terrible things in LibreOffice.
Re:Have You Accounted for User Preference? by WebCowboy · 2012-05-24 15:53 · Score: 1

If your entire office is on LibreOffice, I can see it working well within the office, but once you start sharing documents with external partners, I'm really surprised you've had zero problems.
It seems that the requirement to share complex documents with external recipients in Microsoft Office format is rapidly declining in my experience. In my work I am more and more discouraged to share word documents for example--it is preferred that those be kept internally and that they be put into PDF format to be sent out. The same goes for spreadsheets in many cases too. When such documents ARE widely distributed they tend to be fairly crude or simplistic--Excel spreadsheets that are basically checklists or contain very simple machros and formulae.
I suppose it depends on the industry in which you work. If you have huge macros from hell, strange embedded and linked objects and blinking, beeping, rotating animated logos festooning your office documents then you will have real problems. The problems have not been insurmountable for me personally. I suppose it is the 80-20 or 90-10 rule. The vast bulk of users won't have huge issues. Those that do tend to be "special cases". And, in those special cases if they are distributing such documents they are NOT well recieved by external recipients quite often--even if they are all-MSFT shops. If you have huge macros or special Excel add-ins, or really uncommon embedded or linked objects or are using other arcane features they can break even on other MSFT systems--whether it be some dependency not being installed or IT policies restricting what macros can do or whatever.
It is not too much to ask people sending you documents to send them as PDF, or warn them that for security and interoperability reasons that such nasty complex documents cannot be accepted or may not be fully accessible--at least for the vast majority of users, becasue really, of an Office file is so complex that it is unusable in LibreOffice you are even inviting trouble for users in other MSFT setups too in terms of differing versions, patch levels, installed software and so forth. Complex and/or extremely large MS Office document files are a sign that the wrong tool is being used for the job and it is time to invest in a real solution (Excel is not a database, or a project management system or an enterprise reporting engine--using it as such is akin to using a butter knife as a screwdriver or a stilletto heel as a hammer--it functions but not well at all and it will eventually break from the abuse).
Re:Have You Accounted for User Preference? by Zeromous · 2012-05-25 08:33 · Score: 1

>Semester projects implying you are still an undergraduate student - yet you're a "pro" (at what you don't say) that manages a huge and apparently famous laboratory (we are expected to trust you on this apparently).
Yes I do, and yes I'd rather not share which one. (I run the build farm and health of the lab). Why would I want my /. nick attributable to my professional persona?
>Three times in how many years and on something as unreliable as an SD card and you have more than ONE THOUSAND servers that are "yours"?
Once on an SD card in my personal netbook can you read?
\
>Total of two people involved with the problem despite you apparently running a huge and famous laboratory.
What do you mean? You'd be surprised how few people it takes to run and be responsible for the health of thousands of unique systems these days. You'd be even more surprised as to how FEW we're forced to do it with.
>Good luck with your studies and after you finish you may not want to take up a job writing fiction, people expect it to be a bit more credible.
I haven't studied formally in years. My wife (if you could possibly read) was the one who lost her final semester project due to this "bug" (she is retraining). But no one goes back to school right?)
>I've never heard about problems like yours either. Has anybody connected with openoffice development (which I am not) heard of it? Did you bother to tell them?
No because I have wasted enough time. If you do look up for similar errors you get sneering devs. Frankly I get enough of that 60 hrs a week.
And I don't need it from you either DbIII. you should know better that "never hearing of something before" is not credible defense of a product with known and pervasive compatibility issues with MS formats BY DESIGN. How is my story so far fetched. It's about as farfetched as the idea of you having a neck-beard.
Really, for such a low /. # you're a pretty big fucktard.

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---Up Up Down Down Left Right Left Right B A START
Re:Have You Accounted for User Preference? by dbIII · 2012-05-25 15:45 · Score: 1

with known and pervasive compatibility issues
They are not known and pervasive if NOBODY ELSE KNOWS ABOUT THEM.
Instead of some grumbling which could be mistaken for a vehicle for trumpeting how wonderful you are why not do something that is actually useful and feed the real information (without embellishment and exageration) to someone that can do something about it.
Personally, after cutting through your large supply of bullshit (true or not it's irrelevant and doesn't impress), it looks like you are one of thousands that corrupted an SD card by pulling it out before it had finished writing, and now you've pretended that it's happened a few times, and to somebody else so it can't be blamed on your actions (even if it's a frequent accident anyway).
That's just a guess, but it sounds a hell of a lot more likely than a bug that just keeps on hitting you and nobody else.
You've misunderstood some of what of written above - I was trying to make the point that you've blown your trumpet about being involved with thousands of machines and most likely a lot of people using them yet only yourself and someone very close to you (but not involved with those systems) have apparently seen this. That makes that part of your story incredible (ie. as per the dictionary - not something I can believe is true).
It sounds to me that you are just making up a story to fit your assertion that the program is rubbish. It also sounded very much that you were creating a false persona to try to add some credibility to the made up story, which seemed quite pathetic, because even if it is all true that shouldn't carry any extra weight anyway. I replied because it looked like you'd written an annoying pile of bullshit intended to mislead the gullible and push some sort of agenda.
Re:Have You Accounted for User Preference? by dbIII · 2012-05-25 16:12 · Score: 1

File format conversions frequently suck in general, especially with undocumented and deliberately obfiscated formats. In my industry we're sucessfully reading files in from the 1970s on a frequent basis because there is a published standard, yet there is insanity such as some copies of Word97 not being able to read files produced by other copies of Word97 installed from identically labelled CDs (very old example, but a very extreme one that still pisses me off).
A workflow that involves file format changes just for the sake of using different applications that do the same thing is very poorly conceived, if any thought has been put into it at all. Blaming the application for that lack of thought is not a mature response.
Also "innovations"? Are we talking about the same things here? There haven't really been any innovations in word processor+spreadsheet+slideshow for well over a decade, just a few things that have been borrowed from elsewhere and some interface changes. Any leading DTP program from 1989 has more "innovations" than MS Word or oowriter even though the functions of the two different applications have converged - not that it is a bad thing (you want simplicity in word processing and extreme control in DTP), simply that the office suite space is static apart from a few slideshow gimmicks and interface chanages.
Re:Have You Accounted for User Preference? by jbolden · 2012-05-27 00:39 · Score: 1

You got cheaper C# people than Python people?
Re:Have You Accounted for User Preference? by sjames · 2012-05-28 22:11 · Score: 1

They may need similar functions, but the need is much simpler. For example, in a 10 person company, they may still need calendaring, but they probably don't need Exchange, they just need a common place to post scheduled events and perhaps a way to color code them by type (all hands, sales, engineering, etc). Unlike a fortune 500, there's little danger that the events they need to see will be obscured by events involving hundreds of other employees they don't interact with.
That doesn't really change until there are enough employees that you don't recognize everybody anymore.
I have observed a lot of small operations where the big boss (often the owner) seems to THINK it's a fortune 50 that needs elaborate management structures. If they are implemented, they're bypassed everywhere in order to get things done and it's a good thing because they don''t tend to actually work anyway (because they don't have a fortune 50 budget).
Re:Have You Accounted for User Preference? by lunatic1969 · 2012-05-29 06:19 · Score: 1

We've used LibreOffice/OpenOffice for a long, long time at our office as well without issues.

zimbra by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-23 02:37 · Score: 5, Informative

Zimbra I believe does most if not all of what you are looking for.

Re:zimbra by L4t3r4lu5 · 2012-05-23 03:07 · Score: 1

Another vote for Zimbra. Email, global and personal address lists, calendar including invite system and sharing, resource booking, AD integration should you run a Windows domain...

It's what we use, and for "free" it's great.

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Re:zimbra by rrossman2 · 2012-05-23 04:34 · Score: 1

Absolutely... it works good enough to be used by the University I work at (I don't think the students use it.. at least not yet... it's more of a faculty/staff deal right now)
Re:zimbra by Filgy · 2012-05-23 10:33 · Score: 1

My company switched to Zimbra about 2 years ago, all managed in-house on company owned servers. We have 2 MTAs, 2 LDAP servers, and 2 Mailstores (although only currently using 1 mailstore with RAID and backups since it is in a different physical location than the primary mailstore and I believe it requires licensing to make that work properly). It does everything we want it to and is all open source. The webmail interface is great. We still have alot of users on Outlook 2003 and they are about to get that ripped off their systems and be told to use the zimbra webmail or desktop client instead of paying the MS tax. All in all, it has worked out great for us. The company went from hosted email that would go down once a week to now maybe 10 minutes of downtime in the 2 years we have been using Zimbra.

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-- filgy

Look into Zimbra by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-23 02:37 · Score: 1

Try looking into Zimbra, its like a cheaper, more extensible version of Exchange.

Re:Look into Zimbra by im_thatoneguy · 2012-05-23 04:09 · Score: 1

Ughhhh... a company I worked with had Zimbra and it was terrible. It kind of did all of the things exchange did poorly.
Then they got bought out and now they use an ancient version of Exchange... which isn't much better.
I have no personal preference for exchange. I prefer Gmail. And I don't see why the OP can't mix it up.
Use Gmail for your mail service and use Microsoft Office for your word processing and Excel. The notion that your mail server and productivity software need to be the same seems misplaced.
Re:Look into Zimbra by Filgy · 2012-05-23 10:39 · Score: 1

Your company must not have been utilizing Zimbra correctly then. The only thing I find a bit lacking with it compared to Exchange is shared contact management. Other than that, it's great. My company switched to it 2 years ago and have never been happier (IT is happy and the owners are happy for keeping costs down with a 99.999% uptime running 2 MTAs through different ISPs). Of course Postfix is the MTA Zimbra uses, and Postfix rocks.

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-- filgy

More Google by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-23 02:37 · Score: 2, Informative

Have you considered Google Apps? It is free for up to 10 users. You can use Thunderbird with a couple of plugins to handle the desktop client or just have your people use the web apps which are very good.

Google for Business? by MatrixCubed · 2012-05-23 02:39 · Score: 4, Informative

http://www.google.com/enterprise/apps/business/pricing.html At $5/user/month, it's decently priced.

Re:Google for Business? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-23 02:45 · Score: 1

Seconded. We just switched to Google Apps and it works great. It has all the features asked for above, and great technical support thrown in with the service.
Re:Google for Business? by Dr.+Evil · 2012-05-23 02:57 · Score: 5, Insightful

If you're not in the U.S., putting your data under U.S. jurisdiction *can* be an unacceptable risk.
Protections for non-citizens, non-residents are pretty slim.
Re:Google for Business? by NicknamesAreStupid · 2012-05-23 03:14 · Score: 3, Informative

Google Apps for business is free for up to 10 people. See https://www.google.com/a/cpanel/standard/new3?hl=en&source=gafb-pricing-tabletop-en . You don't get an SLA, but when was the last time you tried to get an SLA enforced?
Re:Google for Business? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-23 03:31 · Score: 5, Insightful

+1 My company switched to Google Apps for Business about six months ago and it has been great so far, especially considering how incredibly affordable it is. Administration is easy, tons of additional services you can choose from, and did I mention how affordable it is? Plus, most users are already very familiar and comfortable with Gmail, and Google even has a neat tool that will migrate existing Outlook .pst's (email, contacts, even calendars) to a user's new Gmail account.
Re:Google for Business? by Hatta · 2012-05-23 04:18 · Score: 2

Protections for resident citizens are pretty slim as well.

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Re:Google for Business? by Rasathus · 2012-05-23 05:39 · Score: 2

Ill second this, Google apps is a great option. Not only have you got an active-sync compatible mail solution, you've got your webmail, google docs and collaboration tools in the same bundle. And at your current company size, you should just about slip under the user cap for their free service.
Re:Google for Business? by MrNiceguy_KS · 2012-05-23 08:21 · Score: 3, Funny

They're Google. They already have all your data. All. Your. Data.
It's creepy, but it does have its advantages. Yesterday I couldn't find my car keys, so I googled them. Turns out I had left them in my gym bag.

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Re:Google for Business? by Filgy · 2012-05-23 10:48 · Score: 1

Google is great until you realize your companies possible sensitive IP could be stored in just about any country in the world.

I think Google offers a more secure 'government' service or something. Last time I checked into that, they could only guarantee that data would not be stored in countries that your country is currently on un-friendly terms with (so they won't even offer you a 'your country and your countries allies only' option for where they store your data).

I think it is pretty damn stupid using Google Apps if the business deals with any type of sensitive data what-so-ever.

My company, for instance, deals with citizens private health care records, so Google Apps was instantly out of the question.

We switched to Zimbra and couldn't be happier. For those saying 'Google Prices are great', you can't beat FREE if you have an admin or two at the company with a clue that can administer the Zimbra setup. With 2 MTAs on different ISPs, we've had maybe a total of 10 minutes downtime in the past 2 years, and even then the messages still queued up and were delivered when everything came back up (a zimbra mailstore takes quite a while to reboot, but the MTAs still cache all incoming messages which are then instantly delivered to the mailstore when it is back available).

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-- filgy
Re:Google for Business? by egranlund · 2012-05-23 12:18 · Score: 1

If you _need_ shared contacts like you mentioned in the OP then I would steer away from Google Apps as it has no support for that (as I found out after I switched a business over to it :/), other than that Google Apps is pretty decent.
May be worth a try checking out Office 365 as well, you can get just hosted exchange (under the E1 mail only plan I believe) for $5/user/month with 25GB of storage and all of the regular exchange features.

If you'd like to stay with Microsoft by HotNeedleOfInquiry · 2012-05-23 02:40 · Score: 5, Informative

Become a Partner. You get pretty much all of their software for 10 desktops and a couple of servers for less than $500 a year.

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Re:If you'd like to stay with Microsoft by Gwala · 2012-05-23 02:41 · Score: 4, Interesting

Yep - the magic words to google are "Microsoft Action Pack Subscription" - for startups it's great. Tons of useful software for cheap. You may also qualify for BizSpark which is even better (and cheaper - although $500 isnt too bad.)

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Re:If you'd like to stay with Microsoft by NewWorldDan · 2012-05-23 03:13 · Score: 3, Insightful

Professionalism.
99% of my customers run Windows and MS Office. That's the standard business environment. By sticking with it, I have fewer problems exchanging documents with my customers. That's a business expense that has to be accounted for. If your staff or customers can't open a spreadsheet, they're wasting their time and they drag IT into it, wasting more resources, and on top of that, you have angry, frustrated customers.
Personally, I like Outlook as a mail client. However, Exchange is awful to deal with. It's just not geared towards the smaller business. I would definately recommend either outsourcing the mail server or using something less complex. What you ultimately use will probably be dictated by what type of phones your employees carry.
Re:If you'd like to stay with Microsoft by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-23 03:18 · Score: 1

I could be wrong here, but does the MAPS license specifically state that you CAN NOT use it in a for profit business, or in a production environment?
It's great for dev work, but I was pretty sure you're not allowed to use it for this purpose?
Re:If you'd like to stay with Microsoft by Gwala · 2012-05-23 03:22 · Score: 1

It varies on which version you get - some of them you can (or could - been a couple of years since I used it). That is a warning sign though - some of the dev ones (with visual studio/etc) are testing only, same as MSDN.

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Re:If you'd like to stay with Microsoft by jeffmeden · 2012-05-23 03:33 · Score: 2

"Everything is GPL, most of our systems can't run 90% of the apps you have on your list, now go screw yourself".
And the other 364 days of the year when you AREN'T getting audited but you ARE trying to get something productive done, you can tell your boss the same thing!
Re:If you'd like to stay with Microsoft by cpu6502 · 2012-05-23 04:07 · Score: 2

I'm amazed how many people are saying Microsoft. In essence you're saying Open Source solutions shouldn't even exist, because they are a non-starter. No wonder Intel and MS continues to hold a monopoly over the OS and Apps and computer platform since ~1988.

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Re:If you'd like to stay with Microsoft by gl4ss · 2012-05-23 04:47 · Score: 1

if he's really a small startup, there's no reason why he shouldn't get the stuff for free from MS, so he should join bizspark. a free sub for two years(and you'll get to keep the sw now too after the two years, at least that's what they told us), possibly even free swag(they were giving away windows phones last winter for example..). there's some free azure time thrown in now too..
http://www.microsoft.com/bizspark/SoftwareAndTools/

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Re:If you'd like to stay with Microsoft by aztracker1 · 2012-05-23 06:36 · Score: 1

I don't think he's saying that Open-Source alternatives are a non-starter.. there's Zimbra and others available that are serviceable, I've been using a commercial mail app (SmarterMail) for windows for several years now. The fact is, I have yet to see a solution that integrates as well with a client app as Exchange + Outlook. Especially in terms of collaboration between users, managing other's calendars/tasks, etc. It isn't *my* first choice, but it's a really compelling one. The hosted Office 365 solution is pretty well priced compared to the alternatives out there.

This next part may seem like flamebait, but there's no reason to be butt-hurt over someone suggesting that the MS product is the best option available. There's nothing wrong with it actually being the best option. In terms of mail/collaboration software there are a lot of options, and that's great. I'm a bit of a google fan, but that doesn't mean I can't recognize where other options are a better fit. I find that google docs works great internally... it's an awesome option for schools, and small businesses. It really just depends on your needs, and who your company interacts with.

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Re:If you'd like to stay with Microsoft by RobertLTux · 2012-05-23 07:24 · Score: 1

and then the Auditor Drones demand receipts for EACH AND EVERY installed copy of EVERY program.
i have heard that they have demanded receipts/purchase orders (with serial numbers) even if you have all of your "magic stickers". trust me if they get going they will find a way to fine you massively.

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Re:If you'd like to stay with Microsoft by im_thatoneguy · 2012-05-23 07:35 · Score: 1

Would you also be amazed to discover that Microsoft holds a monopoly because its products are better than the competition's?
Re:If you'd like to stay with Microsoft by Filgy · 2012-05-23 10:56 · Score: 1

That's why if the BSA walks into my IT department, they get "Here's the door, leave now, you don't have an appointment, we won't give you an appointment, you're now trespassing. Get lawyers involved if you think we are not complying".

Since we use mostly open source software on our servers and all our Windows licenses are legit, if they want to waste the money taking us to court, let them.. We'll be sure to ask for reimbursement of all lawyer fees and time lost when we are found to be in compliance.

Some admins think the BSA is like the FBI where they can just walk into your office and demand to start seeing licenses and what-not. Guess what, they can't do that. I laugh like crazy everytime I hear of an admin caving to them when they just show up unannounced instead of the proper response of "Here's the door, GTFO."

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Re:If you'd like to stay with Microsoft by Dan541 · 2012-05-23 14:09 · Score: 1

Because Open Source solutions just don't cut it. Intel and Microsoft are successful by providing the best quality products.

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Re:If you'd like to stay with Microsoft by Builder · 2012-05-24 01:29 · Score: 1

Your sig... Care to expand ?
I can't even find my original of that LP any more :(
Re:If you'd like to stay with Microsoft by cpu6502 · 2012-05-24 03:52 · Score: 1

>>>Would you also be amazed to discover that Microsoft holds a monopoly because its products are better than the competition's?
Yes.
I don't see how IE is any better than Firefox, seaMonkey, or Opera. Or Lotus Notes better than Thunderbird. I don't see how Office is any better than OpenOffice.org or LibreOffice. I don't see how WMP is any better than VLC Player or Winamp. I don't see how MS Torrent... oh wait they don't have that... well I use uTorrent.
About the only Microsoft product I use at home is Windows (it came free with the hardware). Everything else is non-microsoft.

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Google Apps + Thunderbird & Lightning by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-23 02:40 · Score: 1

Google Apps is free for up to 10 users, so go with that for centralized management of contacts, calendars, mail. Use Thunderbird + Lightning for email, calendaring, and contacts access on the client side. Pretty simple standard stuff really. Google Apps services can tie into most any client software you can think of. Only problem I have with Google Apps is no task syncing. Other than that it's solid.

Re:Google Apps + Thunderbird & Lightning by Korin43 · 2012-05-23 02:47 · Score: 3, Informative

Definitely this. The web clients are the best out there, plus Thunderbird + Lightning is less annoying than Outlook and works on everything. And I seriously doubt you could find a mobile device that doesn't support Gmail + Google Calendar.
Does this method have a good way to handle company-wide contact lists though? I guess you could setup your own LDAP server but I doubt Gmail's web interface will use it.
Re:Google Apps + Thunderbird & Lightning by the+eric+conspiracy · 2012-05-23 03:05 · Score: 2

Thunderbird works fine with LDAP, and you can use the GMail IMAP facility so you never really need to use GMail webmail.
Re:Google Apps + Thunderbird & Lightning by trodofor · 2012-05-23 03:13 · Score: 1

Seconded! While not a complete solution, our small company uses a similar setup. Google calendar works from the web, through Thunderbird and other calendar clients, and through both iOS and Android devices that our employees use. Multiple calendars can be shared and used on every device pretty seamlessly.
Contacts do pose a bit of a problem though, but it has not become a serious problem for our company yet. Storing my own contacts in Google makes it easy to access them on any device through Thunderbird (with addon), my iPhone, or of course the web. Sharing contacts is something that has yet to be solved efficiently.
Re:Google Apps + Thunderbird & Lightning by scdeimos · 2012-05-23 09:11 · Score: 1

And I seriously doubt you could find a mobile device that doesn't support Gmail + Google Calendar.
Have you tried using iDevices with Google Calendar? They suck!
I have simple requirements: I want to be able to create events on my personal calendar that can have two reminders (I usually have one the day before to get materials together, then another an hour or two before so I can get to the meeting) and I want to have the "Phases of the Moon" and "Australian Holidays" shared calendars as well. There's no clean, simple way to do it on iDevices.
If you create an ActiveSync account you can get all three calendars, but you're limited to a single reminder. If you use calendars through your Gmail account connector you can have multiple reminders, but you can't see the shared calendars. If you have both accounts configured and just "hide" your personal calendar on the ActiveSync account you get two alerts for every reminder.
Re:Google Apps + Thunderbird & Lightning by darrylo · 2012-05-24 11:45 · Score: 1

I'm pretty sure the "single reminder" issue is a limitation of ActiveSync. If you use an app like "calengoo" or "calendars", you can set multiple reminders (I believe these sync directly with google calendar, and bypass ActiveSync).

Google Apps Free by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-23 02:41 · Score: 1

Google Apps Free might be a good fit. Free for up to 10 users, so it looks like you'd just make the grade. It would take care of your email, document, calendar sharing needs for the whopping cost of $0.

Also worth looking into would be what services your ISP offers to businesses. For example, I know Comcast offers hosted Exchange solutions to it's business class customers for little to no money. Of course you're marrying yourself to their service, but hey, free is free.

Overall, I'd wholeheartedly recommend Google Apps Free. You're free to move ISP's if you choose, and if you can successfully move everyone to using the web interface for gmail/calendar/contacts/docs/etc. you'll do away with a LOT of overhead. No more configuring outlook. No more (or reduced) need for a fileshare (share docs in google docs). It's a great solution for small operations.

Check this one out .... by DaMattster · 2012-05-23 02:41 · Score: 4, Interesting

I would recommend checking out Sogo. This would provide a good groupware solution. In their upcoming version, 2.0, it will have some goodies like Exchange Server emulation so it will integrate well with those using Outlook. For collaboration, you can check out Alfresco. As for a common identity management solution therein lies the trick. If you are brave, you can check out using Samba4 and configure all of your clients to authenticate against their version of Active Directory. The Samba wiki has some good instructions on that. I know that there is an open source software package that helps integrate Linux with Active Directory but I cannot remember its name. It does get packaged with Ubuntu, however. Hope this helps some .....

Have you looked at... by SpaceWiz · 2012-05-23 02:41 · Score: 2

If you meet the requirements, why don't you do BizSpark?

Pretty sure Google Apps for Business also meets your requirements, but it's around $50 per year per user.

Web-Based Google by Quantus347 · 2012-05-23 02:42 · Score: 1

When facing that much cross-platform usage, Id go with Google Docs/Calander/Chat/Gmail for simplicity and ease of use. Its somewhat feature-light, but would provide the broad base and low cost you are looking for. It probably will never be Great, but it may be Good Enough, at least until the startup grows enough to make larger, more expensive packages worth it.

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Google Apps by aaron44126 · 2012-05-23 02:42 · Score: 1

I see that you mentioned Google Docs, but have you looked at Google Apps for Business (runs on a domain of your choice)? There's a free version for up to 10 accounts. Otherwise, I think it is $50 per user per year.

It supports calendar sharing and company-wide contact sharing (from the web UI anyway). Though I think that the global contact list might be missing from the free version.

Google Apps? by Necroman · 2012-05-23 02:43 · Score: 1

I didn't see you mention Google Apps. My company (500'ish people) are all on Google Apps and I really like it. Plus its free for up to 10 users, so you could at least give it a test drive. It integrates email, calendar, docs, and contacts all into one package (with names shared between each).

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Google Docs by C_Kode · 2012-05-23 02:43 · Score: 3, Insightful

You said Google Docs works fine for the most part, but the Gmail / Calendaring portion doesn't work?

We are a startup (about 25 employees) and Google Docs works fine for Email and Calendaring.

Re:Google Docs by johnwbyrd · 2012-05-23 03:26 · Score: 1

Another vote here for Google Apps and Docs.
You didn't mention other business apps like accounting and other admin functions, but I put in a vote for early virtualization of all your core apps, using VMware or Redhat or whatever your favorite virtualization platform is. When we founded our little company, we installed Quickbooks and SugarCRM and Perforce and a couple other business process apps on virtual machines, and that turned out to be a big win later on.
Re:Google Docs by aaarrrgggh · 2012-05-23 06:09 · Score: 1

Completely agree. We're at 25-30 people now, but gmail was what saved us in our early years. We actually bought a Windows Server SMB edition, but never got around to installing it. We used a NAS box for the first 366 days until it crapped out on us. (Lesson-- after 90 days we should have bought a redundant NAS to work with cashflow...)
Today we have to reconsider if gmail is worth the price, and we have proper file servers with redundant snapshots and all that fun stuff. But when $15 matters, gmail is the way to go.
One thing to keep in mind is that a mildly talented administrative assistant at $10/hour can do many of the tasks that a streamlined software package can automate. The cost-benefit analysis seems to favor meat over bits until you need a second piece of meat to handle the task.

I'm not any sort of IT/implementation guy but... by Bourdain · 2012-05-23 02:44 · Score: 4, Insightful

...in terms of real cost, my guess is that even if you buy whatever licenses you need/want from Microsoft for whatever software you have a need for, it won't really be that expensive compared to irritating your users (also, just use hosted exchange as $10/month/user should be a non-issue).

Before making any decisions, I'd consider asking your admittedly tiny user base what software/suites they need/want instead of just making blind purchasing decisions

Lion Server? by Neil_Brown · 2012-05-23 02:45 · Score: 3, Funny

I've only used mine (and that's a Snow Leopard Server, not Lion) at home, but it would seem to support a lot of what you are asking for, including, I believe, workgroup management for Windows users. You'd need to find clients which would talk to the various server-side applications, and I'm afraid I've no experience of that.

Again from memory, and I may be wrong, my recollection is that Lion Server does not require client licences, so, once you've bought the box, and installed the software, you can connect as many people as it will handle, which might help keep costs down.

Re:Lion Server? by Neil_Brown · 2012-05-23 02:50 · Score: 1

Perhaps I should have said: calendaring uses CalDAV, and the address book uses CardDAV — whether or not there are Outlook connectors / addons for these, I don't know, but there appear to be at least some Windows-based clients for each (Cal, Card). Although whether your userbase would want to use these rather than Outlook is perhaps more questionable.
Re:Lion Server? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-23 09:06 · Score: 1

Sheesh, when I think business communications, document processing, email & schedule collaboration I immediately think of Apple
Go on now and go play with the kiddies while the adults work.
How the fuck this is modded +3 is beyond my comprehension.

Kolab and Citadel by SgtChaireBourne · 2012-05-23 02:46 · Score: 3, Informative

Also look at Kolab and Citadel. They do what you need.

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Easy -- Google Apps by blahbooboo · 2012-05-23 02:46 · Score: 4, Insightful

Just use Google Apps. Provides email, calendaring, etc all integrated and very inexpensive.

Re:Easy -- Google Apps by nyquil+superstar · 2012-05-23 05:27 · Score: 1

GApps is good for what it is, and it knows what it is--an all web suite. I use it for a non-profit I manage. But I also manage a software startup, and Office 365 was a much better choice for us. Got us perfect Outlook/Exchange integration without managing Exchange. Gave the users the same experience they were used to on the desktop. You get all of the features you actually need with the desktop apps-I've written a lot of papers on GApps, but it doesn't cover it for polished sales proposals. But for simpler needs, GApps is great--gmail and calendaring are definitely good enough. It's just the rest of it that falls short.

Microsoft Action Pack by Rob+Nance · 2012-05-23 02:46 · Score: 2

This program is designed for small business/startups. Check it out, gives you internal use of almost the entire Microsoft lineup. http://www.microsoft.com/oem/en/community/mpn/pages/microsoft_action_pack.aspx

Zarafa by PSVMOrnot · 2012-05-23 02:55 · Score: 1

Have you had a look at Zarafa? It's an open source replacement for exchange which handles email, calendaring and contacts. If you ran a server with this then your co-workers could connect with their favourite mail client/calender app, or use the webclient. It also supports Z-push which works like active sync for use with android and windows mobile devices.

I have an instance of it running on a custom built mythbuntu PVR at home to provide me with something other than google calendar to use with my android.

The downsides: the free community edition has some limits to it's features (eg: no multi-user calendar support), so you may need to fork out a few dollars if you need such.

Re:Zarafa by geoffaus · 2012-05-23 03:24 · Score: 1

ok god no! We use this at my work and its always having issues

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Re:Zarafa by darrylo · 2012-05-24 11:51 · Score: 1

Zarafa doesn't seem too bad, but I think it's positively stone age when it comes to mail filtering. Zimbra is much better in this, as is google apps or a hosted exchange solution (like office365).

Count by slasho81 · 2012-05-23 02:56 · Score: 1

we have about 10 people

You're not sure how many people work at your company?

zentyal/zarafa by QuantumRiff · 2012-05-23 02:56 · Score: 1

I just moved a smaller business (about 40 people) to zentyal. http://www.zentyal.org/ includes all sorts of features, like a PDC if you want one, ldap for user management, vpn, groupware (uses zarafa, which is excellent) and many, many other features.

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Have you looked at hosting? by neros1x · 2012-05-23 02:57 · Score: 1

I interviewed recently for a company that does cloud hosting for small businesses, including Microsoft Exchange and Office 365. That may be less expensive than doing it yourself, and they will do most of the IT work for you. They even did backups through the cloud, with thorough reports.

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Homogenization by Scutter · 2012-05-23 03:01 · Score: 1

Definitely ask your users what they want to use. However, they're all going to say something different. You won't be able to make them all happy and certainly not for cheap/free. You may just have to pick one solution that everyone can live with and standardize the network in that solution. "Oh, you can't use $OTHER_DEVICE with our free solution? Well, you can either buy a copy yourself or use the solution we all agreed on." Supporting many different platforms is difficult and can be expensive.

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ClearOS by HideyoshiJP · 2012-05-23 03:02 · Score: 1

It has been some years since I have toyed with it, but you may wish to investigate ClearOS. It seemed to meet all your requirements, though whether they want something on-prem or hosted will make a difference, I'm sure. But to go along with some of these other commenters - if the users prefer Microsoft, it may be worth the money.

office 365 or google docs by alen · 2012-05-23 03:06 · Score: 1

10 people you shouldn't be thinking about managing your own servers. just pay for google docs or office 365.

from what i heard office is a lot better than google docs, but i never used it

Zarafa by vawarayer · 2012-05-23 03:06 · Score: 1

I am happy with Zarafa Web client on my Mac. The interface has been literally copy-pasted from Outlook, so you will not lose yourself in a new environment. I could also access my e-mail using IMAP or any other standard protocol. Free (community) version comes with 3 licenses for MAPI (real Microsoft Outlook) connections (Windows). Pay version is still cheaper than Microsoft Exchange and allows for up to unlimited Microsoft Outlook connections.

I use Z-Push on my iPod Touch (Microsoft ActiveSync-like technology) and it works like a charm. Overall, good documentation and possible integration with other systems. Available on Ubuntu's package management system - easy to install on some other linux distros.

What you want is Office365 by bravecanadian · 2012-05-23 03:07 · Score: 1

Subscription so there is a lack of up front cost and you still get the familiar Office software, Exchange email boxes and none of the headache of managing it yourself.

http://www.office365.com/

Cloud Hosting for only 10 People by na1led · 2012-05-23 03:14 · Score: 1

Cloud Hosting not only saves your money with licenses and hardware, but you also save money with backing up your data. Our company doesn't use Cloud Hosting, and it gets very expensive with all the equipment we have to maintain and license. We also have to maintain DR servers in-case of catastrophic failure. But the drawback to Cloud Hosting is raw processing/network speed, unless you can afford a very high speed Fiber WAN.

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-- By all means let's be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out.

Re:"Hosted exchange" by Windowser · 2012-05-23 03:15 · Score: 2, Funny

Get an office365 subscription.

Hosted exchange + the full office suit. Honestly it's a decent way to do this until you decide to roll your own infrastructure. If you ever do. (We have it scaled across 15 companies and ~1200 users)

And we all know what the 365 in the name means : it's down every February 29th

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Avoid the MS tax, always buy I.B.M. PC's (I Built-it Myself)

Horde by Scarred+Intellect · 2012-05-23 03:18 · Score: 1

Have you checked out Horde? I think it does everything you're asking, except the desktop client.

The needing of a desktop client is, I think, your toughest requirement. If you can let that one go, it's easy.

Exchange server by Karmashock · 2012-05-23 03:20 · Score: 1

I know people hate this stuff... it's microsoft and thus evil... but if you want a user friendly, feature rich, small business email server... It's honestly pretty good.

I'm sure there are free linux alternatives... if you want go with one of them. I'm sure they're great too. I have a lot of experience with exchange and outlook. They're really good at what they do. And while it probably won't scale to google gmail levels it's actually very good even in enterprises.

Do what you like but I like exchange.

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I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.

What about SBS? by b0bby · 2012-05-23 03:23 · Score: 1

If you want Exchange, it's worth looking at SBS - it's pretty much all you'd need, and it works fine with mobile. Not sure about how OSX would play on the domain though.

Consider ownCloud by Kaunt · 2012-05-23 03:35 · Score: 1

If you want to store the data yourself, have a look at http://owncloud.org/features/

Mac OS X Server by Onkel+Ringelhuth · 2012-05-23 03:39 · Score: 1

If you have no religious objections, take a look at Apple's Mac Mini Server package. It's reasonably priced (for some value of reasonable), and supplies all the components you need, apart from that big external RAID you'll want for shares and back-ups. But, before you jump, check out this review.

Re:Mac OS X Server by dindi · 2012-05-23 17:25 · Score: 1

+1 on that solution.
2 notes:
1. If you grow something out (e.g. mail server is too much simplified), you can simply install any Unix software from package or compile your own (e.g. Sendmail, Exim, or Apache/PHP if you want more modules, standard paths).
2. I honestly like the old server offering better. Lion's server IMO is dumbed down beyond dumb and after using the previous server (both on a mini and an actual Apple rack mountable server) it really is a step back in configurability
Either way, it is small, quiet, not too hot and very sparing on electricity. For sure it will serve 10-16 office workers, and it even works as a TimeMachine server. Just plug some Thunderbolt or FireWire disks in, raid them and you have decent backup for Macs and a NAS for the rest.

office365 by ljw1004 · 2012-05-23 03:43 · Score: 1

I just set up office365 for my Dad's small business. It costs $6/user/month if you just want email and online editing of word+excel+ppt, or $20/user/month if you want desktop versions of the software as well. (Both offer free trials). That's not a big upfront cost at all!

Kerio by denis-The-menace · 2012-05-23 03:59 · Score: 1

http://www.kerio.com/connect/exchange-alternative

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Obama's legacy: (N)othing (S)ecure (A)nywhere and (T)error (S)imulation (A)dministration

Hosted Exchange by archaicTG · 2012-05-23 04:00 · Score: 1

Hosted Microsoft platform hands down.

How much is your time worth? You have no dedicated IT staff and should be spending your time working on your company's product.

Yes, open source Exchange alternatives are getting better, and I really like Google Apps. How much time would it take to tweak the integration? How much time to develop workarounds for features that "just work" in Exchange? For a small organization you'll never get that investment back in cost savings.

$60/mo for 10 people is well worth the service you receive. Even the $200/mo for the full Exchange/Office bundle may be worth it.

Re:I'm not any sort of IT/implementation guy but.. by Overzeetop · 2012-05-23 04:02 · Score: 1

This can't be stressed enough. Pay a premium for the highest level of service and support you can get. I know that sounds counter-intuitive, but if you actually have money (as opposed to ten guys bootstrapping the business on cheetos and tap water) it will cost you less than the time you spend to get it done, and it WILL NOT BE YOUR RESPONSIBILITY to keep it running smoothly. Never underestimate the time it takes to manage such a system if it's not your core function.

Think of it this way - your billing rate (and everyone at the company) is at least $100/hr. You'll need to explain this to management and get their blessing. In comparison to a 4 hour meeting telling them why it's worthwhile to have somebody else do it until your're at 50-100 employees, it wil take 4 meetings. 4pplx12hrsx100=$4800. If you have to train your users for half a day - just half a day - because it's new to them you've blown $4000. You'll spend a week figuring out how to make it all work and get the components installed. Another $4000. You're going to lose 2 hours a week per person to people not being able to figure new stuff out and screwing things up. That's $8000 in the first month. The first glitch you have will cost you 16 hours to troubleshoot and fix (if you're lucky). $1600. You'll do that three times a year (again, if your lucky). $4800. You'll spend 4 hours a month just keeping it patched and running. $4800/yr. So, if you actually have work to do in this startup, and you're not just sitting around idle, there's $30,000 at stake in the first year, maybe $20,000 the next. Now decide if it's worth a custom in-house solution.
(Note: if your cloud service goes down for 2 days, and they suck so much there's no local backup, you're still only out $16,000. Even Amazon's S3 faceplant wasn't that bad, and if you'd paid for their top tier distributed service it wouldn't have affected you)

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Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?

Been here multiple times by vanye · 2012-05-23 04:09 · Score: 5, Informative

As a founder of two startups we're been here multiple times. Here's what I've found.

Google (email and docs) works okay for very early stage (engineering only - no sales/marketing people - little need to communicate outside of the company).

As we got closer to launch and hired more outbound people we moved to using Hosted Exchange (Intermedia.net). Outlook is the driving force here, I have code to write and don't want to spend my expensive time fixing email/calendar/desktop support issues.

For Office applications we joined the Microsoft ISV program where we get 10 licenses for all their office products for about $400 per year. That also includes MSDN access so engineering can use Visual Studio.

Engineering does not use Office, all internal engineering documents are on the hosted Wiki (Atlassian) - but the hosted Exchange comes with an Outlook license so developers use that. I will neither help or hinder the use of anything else.

Everyone uses Windows on their laptop - using VMware Workstation to run the Linux VMs used for development.

We run the entire business on hosted services (Intermedia, Atlassian, JungleDisk (backup) and VirtualPBX). Our monthly bill is ~$600 for a 25 person startup - core engineering is now about half the company.

We have ~60 servers - but all are for dev and test, there is no "IT overhead"

The issue is not that you can't make it something else work - but why ? Unless you're developing an office or email software its just not a good use of your expensive (unique) resources. The goal of your company should be to efficiently sell more of your products to people that are likely using Microsoft products (at least the decision makers). So for maximum interoperability and profession appearance use the products your customers are using.

(I use a Mac, but I cannot use it for anything for external communication (PowerPoint, Word etc) - somethings just look different to the Windows version (fonts, text positioning etc). Not all the time, but enough to make it unusable from a professional appearance point of view.

Office 365? by Vrtigo1 · 2012-05-23 04:18 · Score: 1

Seems like Microsoft has created a product to fit the exact scenario you are in with Office 365. They provide hosted Exchange, Sharepoint (and Lync if you like it enough to use it). As I recall, it's about $100/user/year If you can live with web based everything or about $250/user/year if you want the full Office Professional desktop suite as well.

Re:Office 365? by darrylo · 2012-05-23 05:10 · Score: 1

A small business office365 account is $6/user/month or $72/user/year (up to 50 users). If you're willing to go email/calendars only, it's $4/user/month.

Re:"Hosted exchange" by Srsen · 2012-05-23 04:21 · Score: 1

This is what I thought too. Basically subby listed off the feature set for Exchange Online + Office 365. Good option for a small startup if you need to scale quickly or bring in temporary workers.

Every situation is different by lmw94002 · 2012-05-23 04:29 · Score: 1

Having done the the same thing a half dozen times... Choices are typically: a) GoogleApps b) Hosted Exchange (or Exchange-like system) c) Deploying an MS SBS system locally d) Deploying an Exchange-like alternative locally You can make the pitch for whatever you think is best. You are going to own and support it so you have to be comfortable with it. Make the matrix, pros and cons. Considerations might include: a) backups b) compliance c) integration with mobile devices d) what happens if you are 100 people? aka, future planning scenarios Some management is all about the "cloud"... while others care less and just want it to work. Every situation is different.

Zimbra would work! by rrossman2 · 2012-05-23 04:33 · Score: 1

Zimbra fits your roll perfectly. It's able to scale to the levels of the University I work at, so I'm sure it could handle a 10 man team.

It also supports ActiveSync pushing so it can automatically send appointments to your iPad/iPhone/Android device etc. It also web browser based so no need for a stand alone email client (but you could still use one if you wish).

Also, you can view other peoples Calendars, etc.. and push invites to those people (which my boss does.. she'll push out maintenance calls etc to all of us which automatically get added into our calendar)

www.zimbra.com

Office 365 gives you web and desktop clients by Captoo · 2012-05-23 04:50 · Score: 1

Take a look at Office 365. The small business plan costs $6 per user per month. It provides email, a web browser Office suite, an external web site, intranet sites, etc. For those users that need Office client installations, you can add Office Professional Plus for $15 per user per month (or $12 if you have the enterprise plan). I've been told that you don't need to add Office Professional Plus for everyone. You can reduce your costs by choosing who gets it and who doesn't. It's easy. The Office suite has a lot more features than Google Apps. You can get a free trial and see if you like it.

Alternatives Are Available Now. by smpoole7 · 2012-05-23 04:57 · Score: 1

What is really heartening to me, by the way, is how our own users are embracing alternatives -- in fact, we are moving to iPads and Android tablets after years of buying standard Dell and Gateway laptops with MS Office installed. I still use a laptop, but I run OpenSuse Linux on it and LibreOffice is plenty good enough for everything that I do in my job (engineering management).

Now, just a few years ago, if I'd tried to get anyone to try anything other than XP or Vista with MS Office, they would have complained. Now now. I find that VERY heartening.

As for mail ... if you're talking about setting up your own server, the ONLY way to go is Zimbra. The OS build is absolutely free and it'll do everything you need and more. You'll have a few aggravations (some of our users need port 587 for send, others want 465, for example), but we are loving it. Our Windows folks are using the Zimbra Desktop, which rocks.

Give Zimbra a HARD look. I'm speaking from personal experience.

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Cogito, igitur comedam pizza.

Office 365 by nyquil+superstar · 2012-05-23 05:22 · Score: 1

It's kind of a no brainer for us. You get the benefits of a cloud solution, but with awesome desktop integration if you want it (key word being *if*). You get Exchange without having to manage Exchange. You get SharePoint without having to manage SharePoint. You want all web-based? Fine, do that. The pricing is great (like $6/user-month). Want to get more features, or subscription-based Office client apps like Word and Excel (which are quite simply head and shoulders above the web-apps from both MS and Google)? Pay a little more per month. And, like one of the commenters posted, quite sagely, if you create a partner arrangement, you get the E3 plan free for a year, and can extend it if you sell 50 more licenses. Pretty awesome deal. Or sign up for BizSpark, if you qualify, and get the whole enchilada for free for three years, with rights to keep the software you've downloaded. This gets you MSDN Ultimate for three years. It's insane. We've leveraged both of these, and the results are awesome for our company.

Nonfunctional Requirements First by jamcc · 2012-05-23 06:04 · Score: 1

To take all of the marketing bias/hype out of the equation, the exercise you must do is to write out your Non-functional requirements first.
Example:
- A solution that successfully integrates documents, spreadsheets, email, calendaring, contacts, tasks, and does so seemlessly.
- A solution that can support a single-sign-on approach to password/identity management
- A solution that facilitates usage across devices (physical desktop, virtual desktop, roaming laptop, handheld device)
......

You get the idea.

Then, evaluate the solutions based on your requirements. Is it Google Apps? O365? 3rd party hosted Exchange as a service?

There are a lot of choices. Consider what it costs to run a server, maintain licenses, etc. compared to these *as-a-Service options. For 10 people, buying server infrastructure is overkill.

The easy way... by Paracelcus · 2012-05-23 06:49 · Score: 1

Is to use the mail system included with most web hosting deals, the always give multiple options (IMAP, POP3, Etc) plus lots of extras. Then use T-bird, Firefox, Libra Office, Ubuntu for your desktop/laptop and pick up at least one of the many 2+ terabyte NAS devices tat can be had for less than $300 (backup & user files).

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I killed da wabbit -Elmer Fudd

Google Docs, Teamlab CRM by unixhero · 2012-05-23 07:24 · Score: 1

Teamlab provides a FREE CRM which also has a document management, a calendar suite and a free document sharing and real-time document editing. FREE http://www.teamlab.com/ Google Docs And a community forum, like Vanilla Forums to handle discussions and ticket management

Re:I'm not any sort of IT/implementation guy but.. by im_thatoneguy · 2012-05-23 07:51 · Score: 1

*This*, IT loves to be penny wise and pound foolish.

Software is cheap. All software is practically free. If your employees are bringing in $100-$200 an hour then if the infrastructure costs $200 per employee it's .1% of their revenue. If it costs then 1 minute per *WEEK* then the difference between a free and $100 program pays for itself over the course of a year.

Re:For Email by cayenne8 · 2012-05-23 08:22 · Score: 1

In answering my own email, I found this article that gives a number of good sounding choices for open source calendaring systems, that you could pair with a great email server like postfix.

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Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........

Re:For Email by nullchar · 2012-05-23 10:10 · Score: 1

You'll need some sort of LDAP server for the shared contacts, and other data storage (e.g. permissions, roles). The bad news is managing LDAP sucks (e.g. OpenLDAP). The good news is that almost everything supports LDAP for authentication. Even roundcube webmail works well with LDAP for auth and shared contacts.

SME Server? by aklinux · 2012-05-23 10:57 · Score: 1

I've used SME Server successfully in the past. http://wiki.contribs.org/Main_Page

Re:Hosted Office & Exchange - haters gonna hat by Dan541 · 2012-05-23 14:29 · Score: 1

I get to deal with open source hippies every week.

They are so proud when they manage to do something in open source that Microsoft solutions already do by default.

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An SQL query goes to a bar, walks up to a table and asks, "Mind if I join you?"

Really? by Alex+Belits · 2012-05-23 16:28 · Score: 1

10 people

user management

What is wrong in this picture? Or, to be more blunt, what are the real intentions of posting this question here?

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Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.

What kind of startup? by Casandro · 2012-05-23 17:56 · Score: 1

Are you the "grab as much money from investors and run" kind of startup? Then it doesn't matter.

If you are the "we want to build a sustainable business" kind of startup, then please as fast as you can, get rid of the cancer of "Office" software. Those packages probably are the biggest productivity robber you can have.
Then make sure you have all your data in open, preferably text-based formats.

Believe me, in a few years you'll be thanking me when either smarter start-ups with automation compete with you, or when your current brand of office software isn't maintained any more.

Bedework, a CalDAV server by Kolargol00 · 2012-05-23 20:44 · Score: 1

Have you tried Bedework?

Bedework is an open-source enterprise calendar system that supports public, personal, and group calendaring. It is designed to conform to current calendaring standards with a goal of attaining strong interoperability between other calendaring systems and clients. Bedework is built with an emphasis on higher education, though it can be (and is) used by many commercial enterprises.

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XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more. Junta

Zealotry aside by narrowhouse · 2012-05-24 02:08 · Score: 1

Whether you love or hate Microsoft or opensource, DO NOT get an in house solution unless you plan on growing a real IT department. Google Apps, Office 365, hosted mail or Exchange from intermedia or Rackspace, hosted Zimbra, Citadel, zarafa, whatever, do not go with an in-house setup for the email or collaboration. You will be switching to software as a service within 3 years anyway without a real IT staff. No solution mentioned by any of the posters will work long term in house without dedicated support.

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Insert pithy comment here.

Re:One word... by Kiaser+Zohsay · 2012-05-24 02:09 · Score: 1

Explaining a joke is like dissecting a frog. You understand it better when you're done, but the frog dies.

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I am not your blowing wind, I am the lightning.

There is no free lunch by MrObi · 2012-05-24 09:58 · Score: 1

You will be paying it either from your back skin or paying someone else to do it. How much does you work cost? I would pick Office 365 but thats just me. Some points from O365: Outlook for Windows and Mac, ActiveSync native support on every decent mobile hardware (mail, calendar, contacts sync), Outlook Web Access (webmail), IMAP/POP/SMTP support, shared resource calendars and shared contacts possible trough Sharepoint. Some more advanced things may require some powershell magic.

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Options For Good (Not Expensive) Office Backbone For a Small Startup

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