Windows 2003 SBS can now support up to 75 CALs. It can also be upgraded to the full version of Windows 2003 (with Exchange, SQL, ISA, etc) for around $1,769. To make a long story short, your SBS investment is NOT lost when "Transitioning" to the full versions of the MS products. Check out the FAQ
It really pisses me off that MS has done such a great job with the SBS 2003 product (and licensing). It is hard to recommend SLES or RHES when the Windows/Exchange powerhouse comes so cheap. And before anyone goes spouting off about Sendmail and Postfix just take a moment to consider that (in the corporate world) the only two email systems that exist are Exchange and to a lesser extent Groupwise.
Thank god that someone else "gets it". I am tired of people talking about how much $$$ these products are. In the grand scheme of things, the price of Exchange (and the CALs) is pretty small.
Note -- I am not a Microsoft apologist, but I do think that the combination of Exchange and Outlook is vastly superior to anything I have seen in the *nix world. Please allow me to address your 4 points. Please don't think of my comments as a flame, they are not meant to be. I just want to point out that Exchange is not as poorly constructed or difficult to administer as people make it out to be.
1) All the public emails are stored in a single information store file... So that's 4 files that hold all of your organization's "crucial" information. These files break easily; in my experience about once a year on a good RAID and much more often on bad hardware or more than about 500 users. At that point your options are rolling back to a backup (which, btw, requires a special expensive plugin for any backup software suite) or paying data recovery people a few hundred dollars to get it back. If you have more than 100 users you should be running the Enterprise Edition which gives you the ability to house multiple information stores. If one store breaks, use the MS utilities (which are very good, BTW) to fix it or use the recovery store to feature in Exchange 2003. As for your "expensive" backup agent, look at the prices, not more than $1000-$3000. A drop in the bucket compared to the rest of an enterprise ready backup system.
2) Moreover, when even one of those stores go down, the other stores usually stop working. So if your contacts store gets corrupted, you can't use your calendar or send email. Do you even know how to configure a proper Exchange org? I have to assume that any sizeable Exchange org with have more than 1 server or info store. If properly configured (it really isn't hard) the only people that will experience downtime are those on the affected store.
3)They incorporated email, calendaring and contact management into a single software package. Bad design in principle, but fine. The worse problem is there's no way to extend it to work with the rest of your particular fulfillment chain. Want to do some lead management with your contacts? Host a local NNTP server you want indexed in a public folder as though it were a thread of emails? Want all calendar entries to display in the home office's local time? Tough... pay through the nose for MS's CRM solution, because there's no way to write one yourself without having to reimpliment most of what Exchange does. I can't argue with much of this, but keep in mind that there are plenty of Exchange API's to work with. How do you think that so many commercial products (Antivirus, Blackberry) do it? If looking for a good CRM, consider Interface Interaction (or several others). They all tie into Exchange very nicely.
4)You can't distribute its components (mail, calendaring, contacts, etc.) on your network without a lot of handwaving and paying for a lot more licenses. Almost true, they tie users, not services, to a particular server.
Now think of some of the benefits... A first-class web interface (I can't think of much that competes with OWA 2003, even with non-IE browsers), compatibility with almost any device a corporate user can throw at it, great calendar and contact integration, a workable permissions model, and the knowledge that a real corporation will support it if something goes wrong.
I support over 30 clients running everything from Exchange 5.5 - 2003. Many of those clients are well over 2000 users, yet I have NEVER had more than 12 hours downtime on a single information store (roughly 75-100 users).
Personally, I would love to see a good alternative to Exchange that works on Linux. SuSE OpenExchange always looked promising, so I'll keep one eye on this release for my SMB clients and the other eye on the new Groupwise for my larger clients.
I love WTKS! Since I moved from Orlando, I have been forced to listen to WJFK (Washington, DC) but that just doesn't cut it for me. Glad to see that there are other people out there who enjoy good talk radio.
Hmm, I wonder if that strange guy is still calling up and asking "are you my daddy?" in a little girl's voice. Ahh... the memories.
Speaking of sound, don't try using an ESS1371 card with Suse 9.1. All you'll get is an annoying hiss... Seems that they screwed something up in the aRts package because the KDE 3.2.x RPMs for 9.0 are broken as well.
Not to mention: 1) Network (Samba) browser is broken. 2) The KDE startup sound is pointing to a non-existant file (pointing to a wav when it should be an OGG) I have only worked with 9.1 pro, so things may be different on the el-cheapo personal edition.
All in all I am VERY disappointed with this release. I'm actually a huge Suse fan (even purchased Novell stock recently) so don't think that I am bashing Suse, I just think that they can do better.
By the way, I'd really like to know why I have to wait for Ximian to support Suse 9.1, they ARE the part of same company now and should at least have had red-carpet support ready for the 9.1 release!
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I'm glad to see that you, sir, have learned the first rule of business.
Cover Your Ass!
NDS is new? What was that thing I was using back in the old NW 4.1 days many years ago?
Personally, I think NDS is the one thing that will make Linux a viable option for many enterprises.
Close, but not quite.
c hinfo/overview/licensingfaq.mspx
Windows 2003 SBS can now support up to 75 CALs. It can also be upgraded to the full version of Windows 2003 (with Exchange, SQL, ISA, etc) for around $1,769. To make a long story short, your SBS investment is NOT lost when "Transitioning" to the full versions of the MS products. Check out the FAQ
http://www.microsoft.com/WindowsServer2003/sbs/te
It really pisses me off that MS has done such a great job with the SBS 2003 product (and licensing). It is hard to recommend SLES or RHES when the Windows/Exchange powerhouse comes so cheap. And before anyone goes spouting off about Sendmail and Postfix just take a moment to consider that (in the corporate world) the only two email systems that exist are Exchange and to a lesser extent Groupwise.
Ask and you shall receive...
http://www.tivo.com/2.1.2.asp
Ahh, the memories of BMRT. You know, I actually have that program to thank for getting me involved in Linux in the first place.
OT, I know, but I had to reminisce.
Check again, they also have a very good Unix product.
Thank god that someone else "gets it". I am tired of people talking about how much $$$ these products are. In the grand scheme of things, the price of Exchange (and the CALs) is pretty small.
Not true, Outlook is merely a front-end to the Exchange database.
I do agree, however, that Outlook is the weak link.
Note -- I am not a Microsoft apologist, but I do think that the combination of Exchange and Outlook is vastly superior to anything I have seen in the *nix world. Please allow me to address your 4 points. Please don't think of my comments as a flame, they are not meant to be. I just want to point out that Exchange is not as poorly constructed or difficult to administer as people make it out to be.
1) All the public emails are stored in a single information store file... So that's 4 files that hold all of your organization's "crucial" information. These files break easily; in my experience about once a year on a good RAID and much more often on bad hardware or more than about 500 users. At that point your options are rolling back to a backup (which, btw, requires a special expensive plugin for any backup software suite) or paying data recovery people a few hundred dollars to get it back.
If you have more than 100 users you should be running the Enterprise Edition which gives you the ability to house multiple information stores. If one store breaks, use the MS utilities (which are very good, BTW) to fix it or use the recovery store to feature in Exchange 2003. As for your "expensive" backup agent, look at the prices, not more than $1000-$3000. A drop in the bucket compared to the rest of an enterprise ready backup system.
2) Moreover, when even one of those stores go down, the other stores usually stop working. So if your contacts store gets corrupted, you can't use your calendar or send email.
Do you even know how to configure a proper Exchange org? I have to assume that any sizeable Exchange org with have more than 1 server or info store. If properly configured (it really isn't hard) the only people that will experience downtime are those on the affected store.
3)They incorporated email, calendaring and contact management into a single software package. Bad design in principle, but fine. The worse problem is there's no way to extend it to work with the rest of your particular fulfillment chain. Want to do some lead management with your contacts? Host a local NNTP server you want indexed in a public folder as though it were a thread of emails? Want all calendar entries to display in the home office's local time? Tough... pay through the nose for MS's CRM solution, because there's no way to write one yourself without having to reimpliment most of what Exchange does.
I can't argue with much of this, but keep in mind that there are plenty of Exchange API's to work with. How do you think that so many commercial products (Antivirus, Blackberry) do it? If looking for a good CRM, consider Interface Interaction (or several others). They all tie into Exchange very nicely.
4)You can't distribute its components (mail, calendaring, contacts, etc.) on your network without a lot of handwaving and paying for a lot more licenses.
Almost true, they tie users, not services, to a particular server.
Now think of some of the benefits... A first-class web interface (I can't think of much that competes with OWA 2003, even with non-IE browsers), compatibility with almost any device a corporate user can throw at it, great calendar and contact integration, a workable permissions model, and the knowledge that a real corporation will support it if something goes wrong. I support over 30 clients running everything from Exchange 5.5 - 2003. Many of those clients are well over 2000 users, yet I have NEVER had more than 12 hours downtime on a single information store (roughly 75-100 users). Personally, I would love to see a good alternative to Exchange that works on Linux. SuSE OpenExchange always looked promising, so I'll keep one eye on this release for my SMB clients and the other eye on the new Groupwise for my larger clients.
Great, now you just gave me an excuse to buy XM!
I love WTKS! Since I moved from Orlando, I have been forced to listen to WJFK (Washington, DC) but that just doesn't cut it for me.
Glad to see that there are other people out there who enjoy good talk radio.
Hmm, I wonder if that strange guy is still calling up and asking "are you my daddy?" in a little girl's voice.
Ahh... the memories.
Speaking of sound, don't try using an ESS1371 card with Suse 9.1. All you'll get is an annoying hiss... Seems that they screwed something up in the aRts package because the KDE 3.2.x RPMs for 9.0 are broken as well.
Not to mention:
1) Network (Samba) browser is broken.
2) The KDE startup sound is pointing to a non-existant file (pointing to a wav when it should be an OGG)
I have only worked with 9.1 pro, so things may be different on the el-cheapo personal edition.
All in all I am VERY disappointed with this release. I'm actually a huge Suse fan (even purchased Novell stock recently) so don't think that I am bashing Suse, I just think that they can do better.
By the way, I'd really like to know why I have to wait for Ximian to support Suse 9.1, they ARE the part of same company now and should at least have had red-carpet support ready for the 9.1 release!