Exchange Alternatives Round-up 365
richi writes "eWEEK has a review of Linux-based alternatives to MS Exchange: Group Where? Almost Anywhere. Focusing on how well they integrate with Outlook, it looks at Bynari Insight 4.2, CommuniGate Pro 4.2, Gordano 11 and Scalix Server 9.2.1."
They forgot about ExchangeIt (Score:5, Insightful)
Disclaimer: I used to work there (but not on that product), and I still think that company is really cool.
Re:They forgot about ExchangeIt (Score:2)
ExchangeIt is another option.
Disclaimer: I used to work there (but not on that product), and I still think that company is really cool.
No offense, but their marketing department needs to pull their heads out:
I highly doubt that in all the world, there is not another
Re:They forgot about ExchangeIt (Score:2, Informative)
Sorry but no thanks.
Re:They forgot about ExchangeIt (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:They forgot about ExchangeIt (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:They forgot about ExchangeIt (Score:4, Interesting)
Yup, I evaluate expensive software suites now and then, and if you have a "contact us" on the pricing page, it's a negative mark. If I am looking at e.g. 20 different packages, I'll only trial 3 maybe 4 of them. If you have too many negative marks, then you get binned early.
Go ask your HR department how they deal with CV's and job openings. Same process; you have to get the list to a managable size.
Re:They forgot about ExchangeIt (Score:5, Funny)
Are they taunting me?
Re:They forgot about ExchangeIt (Score:2, Informative)
All too big - Hula is a better way to move (Score:4, Informative)
Re:All too big - Hula is a better way to move (Score:2)
Re:All too big - Hula is a better way to move (Score:2)
Re:All too big - Hula is a better way to move (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:All too big - Hula is a better way to move (Score:2)
Re:All too big - Hula is a better way to move (Score:4, Funny)
Phillip.
Re:All too big - Hula is a better way to move (Score:5, Interesting)
If you want to get off the MS crack (Score:5, Informative)
Re:If you want to get off the MS crack (Score:3, Insightful)
Apparently. You have to burrow through a few layers of mostly empty Web pages to get to the OpenChange site. This project does not appear to be anywhere near something functional compared to the proprietary items discussed in the article. It also seems to be focused more on extracting Exchange data than replacing its functionality.
HAH (Score:3, Interesting)
Even with a roseta stone people can't figure out how to get by, too many advanced th
Active Directory integration? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Active Directory integration? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Active Directory integration? (Score:2, Interesting)
It's called LDAP. And we were using it for years before Active Directory...
Oh wait, Active Directory uses LDAP too.
It's not the directory, it's what's in it (Score:2)
Re:It's not the directory, it's what's in it (Score:2, Troll)
Does Apple Computer count?
Re:Active Directory integration? (Score:2, Interesting)
Huh? What exactly do you mean by "Full" integration?
Besides the fact that the article states that " All the products support Active Directory", what part of AD do you need to support email?
AD can be accessed using LDAP so all the information is there, and CommuniGate for one, can be externally scripted to do anything you want. I set that sucker up to externally route emails to different office servers based on an AD attribute.
And yes, Exchange could do the same thing only a lot more expensively and if anyt
Re:Active Directory integration? (Score:2)
Re:Active Directory integration? (Score:2)
I've done both and highly skilled from Exchange 5.0 and MsMail before that. Going to another mail store type is a cumbersome task and I thought Domino was the worst product ever. I forced myself to re-learn Domino from the ground up, -not as in Exchange does it this way, how does Domino do the same thing- and it b
Re:Active Directory integration? (Score:2)
Would you care to enlighten us on what "full AD integration" means? Active directory is just an LDAP server user to most applications. That's a trivial feature to implement.
Not to mention the hundreds (thousands?) of programs that need Exchange.
Can you give some examples of applications that most firms would actually need? Also note that many of those applications exist because Exchange is deficient in areas.
The closest I have worked with a
Re:Active Directory integration? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Active Directory integration? (Score:5, Interesting)
Hell No (Score:3, Informative)
No...don't do it. Yeah, the price is attractive, with everything in one box. But the problem is that a lot of the things in SBS are crippled, and as one consultant put it, "SBS is a Frankenstein of complexity underneath". And if you're getting the version with SQL, you have to buy hardware and memory that's so beefy, you could have bought two inexpensive servers otherwise (unless you like your network and mail to crawl). SBS limits what you
Re:Active Directory integration? (Score:5, Informative)
AD, Exchange, SQL, etc on 1 box, supported.
Re:Active Directory integration? (Score:3, Interesting)
A 486 running a mail server and fully integrated web-based calendaring?
Did I say fully integrated? I don't recall saying that.
My only point (besides venting steam caused by having to administrator Exchange) was that a simple little web-based program could replace all of the calendaring functionality of Exchange. If you got a little bit more fancy you could build it on an SQL backend (mySQL anyone?) and share the appointments/schedules within the entire company.
How does any company besides Microsoft t
Don't worry about this jackass (Score:5, Informative)
Exchange is good software. It Just Works. And it performs exceptionally well. I've been working with it for years.
I consulted at a Univerisity with two Active/Passive Exchange clusters servicing over 12,000 users. Some used Outlook, some used POP/IMAP, some used OWA. It was Exchange 2000, later 2003. It's not like these were powerhouse big-iron type machines, either - quad processor boxes with 4GB RAM attached to a Clariion, I think they were 2.4Ghz Xeons. Of course, those were the mailbox servers - we had other machines for connectors and OWA front-end. But that's just normal best practices with a busy Exchange environment.
Another placed I worked at had dual-processor Compaq DL380's running the show, with over 2500 users per node. No sweat.
Usually, poor performance on Exchange is due to mis-configurations and not enough disk I/O. You can throw as many processors you want at Exchange, but it's really all about IO.
This guy also doesn't know the first thing about database servers if he's bitching about the memory usage on Store.exe. Store.exe is (as we know) the information store database service. It will use as much memory as it needs, and as is available. Usually the big memory usage is just cached data. Store.exe will give up all it's cached paged as soon as another app requires it. A lot of these kids now a days still think every app needs to run in 200k memory or it's "bloat." What's the point in having 4GB RAM if your applications don't use it?
They've obviously never administered a large database server. A big MS-SQL database server will cache the whole database, if it can. 1GB on store.exe? Try 4GB on mssql.exe.
I agree that there's issues with Exchange when it comes to administration (Public Folders can get unmanagable if you don't pay very close attention to user activity, although since Exchange 2000 I've never had any issues with PF Replication.) Overall, there's no other system that's as capable as Exchange for your basic groupware needs. It's VERY stable.
Re:Don't worry about this jackass (Score:3, Insightful)
overkill before the need for spam filtering.
We could always tell the customers who ran exchange. Their mailserver would go down at least once per week. You can blame poor administration, etc, but it was consistent from site to site....
Re:Don't worry about this jackass (Score:3, Insightful)
Actually it is, with a competent administrator. I've managed a medium-sized company's IT deptartment, including Exchange server for years, from 5.5 to 2000 to 2003. All in all it's worked solidly for a huge majority of the time, increasingly so with each new version.
Not what I've seen on Google.
"Results 1 - 10 of about 5,200,000 for Microsoft Exchange problem"
Wow. Talk about a good source of information about a product's stability, the number of Google query results. "Let's see how man
Re:Don't worry about this jackass (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't know man. Exchange works great, but I guess if you have bad admins, shitty hardware, and an IT department th
IBM fails once again (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:IBM fails once again (Score:3, Informative)
Click here [ibm.com] to download a trial of Lotus Domino for Linux. Click here [ibm.com] for a Notes client for Windows (works on Wine) and Mac.
Re:IBM fails once again (Score:3, Interesting)
You did even less. Wikipedia does less. It sounds like Active Directory is good for providing a company phonebook, but that doesn't sound like that big a deal.
So can someone actually explain - besides calendar, address book, and email - what does it do? Yes, I realise that it allows some nice conflict-resolution and organisation on those fronts, but still... what
Re:Lotus on Linux (Score:2)
Lotus Notes on Linux (Score:3, Informative)
Lotus Notes runs under Linux if you use wine. IIRC IBM had to do some work to get it going, but at least since 2002 it's possible.
None of them are solutions (Score:5, Insightful)
My *real* alternative to an expensive Exchange server in house is: hosted Exchange [hp.com]. It's *much* cheaper for small businesses, and there's no need to sacrifice any functionality.
Re:None of them are solutions (Score:4, Insightful)
We migrated the stafflist to LDAP, so the argument about the staff list not showing up when composing emails has been vanquished as well.
I think what people need to realize is that contact and scheduling systems are an amalgam of several networking protocols. With a pretty front end. I keep forgetting the pretty front end. In any case, and fool with enough time on his hands and a DB backend could build his own.
Re:None of them are solutions (Score:2)
Stick an extra copy of firefox on their machine, give it a nice calendary icon, set the homepage to the calendar page, disable all the menubars, change the executable name, change the titlebar with firesomething, and tell everyone it's their new calendaring app. Sure, it's still separate from their email client, but I bet most people wouldn't be able to tell that it's running in a browser...
Re:None of them are solutions (Score:3, Insightful)
I think its funny that you do not know what features the alternatives lack, but you see those features as manatory for a viable alternative .
Microsoft takes, the communication protocol of the day and dumps it in Exchange, and writes the client side support into Outlook.
IM, VOIP, CRM, ERP, you-name-it, MS as Exchange/Outlook support for it.
The vast majority of s
Re:None of them are solutions (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:None of them are solutions (Score:2)
If your Exchange setup is hosted, you end up having to pull everything from the WAN, which is tedious for larger attachments unless you have 3Mbit or larger pipe and your hosting provider is topologically close to your ISP.
If you never use them, it's probably a pretty good deal and a lot less headache than in-house Exchange.
MAPI? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:MAPI? (Score:4, Informative)
RTFA:
The problem with MAPI has been less an issue of reverse engineering a protocol, and more an issue of trying to replicate the DCOM interface. Microsoft piled on the technology stacks in making MAPI, thus confounding attempts to create a compatible connector. It was only a year or two ago that Ximian finally figured it out.
Re:MAPI? (Score:4, Informative)
Ximian hasn't figured out the MAPI, they use WebDAV as their line protocol, I suspect. Could be wrong. Exchange supports WebDAV access.
Trying to reverse MAPI line protocol is insane. What you want to do is write a client-side connector, like all the vendors in the article. I'm working on one at openconnector.org [openconnector.org]
MAPI, btw, is a semi-documented standard. There are at least two books on it. But still, MS keeps tweaking it and doesn't release the changes, so we have to go back and reverse engineer those changes. In all its just a lot of coding, rather and reverse engineering.
Re:MAPI? (Score:2)
Question: Is Brutus [omesc.com] a full MAPI implementation? OMESC claims it is, but I'm not certain if they're referring to the API or Protocol. (My feeling is that they mean the API.)
Re:MAPI? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:MAPI? (Score:3, Informative)
MAPI and the Exchange protocol are two different things. MAPI is an API, a set of functions, for programs that run on Windows to do mail-related stuff. It is also an abstraction, that hides the actual over-the-wire protocol used to talk to Exchange. Third party vendors implement the MAPI interface so that Outlook (and other MAPI clients, if there are any?) can use it. The actual
GroupWise? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:GroupWise? (Score:2)
Re:GroupWise? (Score:3, Interesting)
I just migrated my servers from 5.5EP to 6.5, and it is by far the best solution IMHO. Now, we are a Novell Shop mind you.
We've seen every iteration since the WordPerfect Messaging Server 4.x days. I am debating going to 7.x as the latest version is so solid from the server end and client end (you have to make sure you admin your servers right and not take shortcuts or cheap out, then it's solid). It's decreased my support time dramatically - the users love it, expecially
Re:GroupWise? (Score:3, Interesting)
What about webbased products (Score:2)
Re:What about webbased products (Score:2)
Exchange is rarely the right solution (Score:3, Insightful)
It's not that Exchange is bad (though any program that has an entire cottage industry dedicated to backing it up can't be great), it's that it does TOO MUCH. Very few companies have any chance of getting all their employees to actually use all the features of Exchange. And, really, it might not be worth their time to train them on it in the first place. MOST businesses just need good email. All the *collaborative* features simply require too much of a change in the way people think about their job to really get used.
For the vast majority of small-to-medium-sized businesses, they'd be better served with a good Postfix/Courier-IMAP/SquirrelMail setup, with greylisting and SpamAssassin and anti-virus scanning. All of which is free. And MUCH more stable than any Exchange setup I've ever seen.
The only thing that Exchange has over everything else is that it can use domain usernames/passwords. Big fucking deal.
Re:Exchange is rarely the right solution (Score:3, Informative)
* To feel important by using more of those MS Office components (Word - check; Excel - check; Outlook - ah ha! check; Powerpoint - hmmmmm *gets cracking on a hum-dinger of a presentation about NOTHING; Access - What the?) They cost a bundle - need to use them!
* Integration with the Windows Network
* Corporate, MS monopolized computing environment dictates its use
* MCSE originally set up the network and all the functionality, carved operating procedures in stone
* Too ignorant t
Re:Exchange is rarely the right solution (Score:2)
But as anything else, it kind of sucks. You get tied into the Microsoft file-formats for everything, making it damn hard to switch to anything else in the future. Which is Microsoft's plan, obviously.
I just find it funny that so many companies jump on the Exchange bandwagon when the FREE alternatives are better in almost every way that counts.
Re:Exchange is rarely the right solution (Score:2)
And if you send a file to someone outside your company, a link to a file server certainly isn't going to be useful. In today's environment of outsourcing and not knowing who's going to be sitting at the desk next to you tomorrow, it's a smart thing to be doing.
Exchange forms. That's it. That's Exchange'
Price differential (Score:2)
With the exception of Scalix Server, all the products have prices lower than those of most enterprise groupware applications, with per-user costs in the range of $20 to $47. Exchange 2003, in contrast, has a per-user license cost of $67, while Scalix Server's price approaches $60 per user.
Surely if you're a big enough corporation to pony up the money for Outlook and want Exchange then the saving of $20-$47 per head is peanuts and it w
Re:Price differential (Score:2)
Even without Office, Outlook is "essentially free" - every Exchange CAL includes an Outlook license.
Re:Price differential (Score:2)
Except that none of them have the same features. From the article "None of the products provides full Outlook-to-Exchange feature fidelity in Outlook".
So yes, you would be saving money but at the expense of functionality and thats ignoring the inclusion of Outlook licences in the Exchange CAL which you wouldn't get if you went with an alternative solution.
The reverse? (Score:3, Insightful)
As such, what works for the reverse - people who don't (or can't) run Outlook in a company that runs Exchange?
Here's my situation: We run Exchange Server 5.5, *without* IMAP support. Believe me, I've begged for it, it's not happening.
I've tried Ximian/Novell's Exchange Connector, but it only works for Exchange 2000/2003. Our server is too old, and they don't plan to upgrade yet.
Anyone know of anything else that'll work? Right now I'm going in through the Java-riffic Outlook Web Access. I'd almost rather eat glass.
Re:The reverse? (Score:2)
I absolutely agree with you. What the world needs is an open source solution to talking with Exchange for those of us forced to use it. One possiblity may be brutus [omesc.com] though it does not appear to be usable yet.
Re:The reverse? (Score:2)
I'll give it a try - they specifically claim support for Exchange 5.5. Thanks.
How about alternatives to Outlook? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:How about alternatives to Outlook? (Score:4, Interesting)
Funny how the best software MS writes is for Mac
Some info about those alternatives... (Score:3, Informative)
Bynari Insight: We've tried working with the software, but testing resulted in much frustration in trying to set it up properly. I'll give kudos for the Bynari folk for helping out... but it looks like there's a long way to go. Maybe they need to upgrade their config to reflect Postfix changes...
CommunigatePro: Everyone favorite, because it's so eaaaaaaazzzzzzzzyyyyy. This one all I needed to do was manual tweak a few things and it's running perfectly. Expensive, but worth it.
Scalix: We're testing this one out now. It requires ether RedHat, Fedora, SuSE, or an RPM based system that you can fake out to be ether one of the three -- it ships as an RPM-based installer. It also runs on Java, but it comes with Tomcat, configures itself and Apache, and it works! The community edition is out and free, with some limitations, and there's no native mail fetching (but we can use Fetchmail).
We haven't tried Gordano, but we have tried exchange4linux (e4l) and that was a mess to set up.
Communigate Pro (Score:2, Insightful)
The web mail is slick. IMAP works beautifully. The API for customer-added functionality is extensive. The system is rock solid reliable, and FAST FAST FAST.
If you have too many accounts, they support clustering on multiple servers. Here's a quote from their manual:
When your site serves more than 150,000-200,000 accounts, or when you expect really heav
Re:Communigate Pro (Score:2)
Re:Communigate Pro (Score:3, Informative)
>an open source mail package that can live up to that particular boast.
Try Hula [hula-project.org].
-Mark
Re:Communigate Pro (Score:3, Informative)
The only problem with Communigate Pro is that it is *****EXPENSIVE*****. For a small hosting company with 1000 email boxes, they wanted *****THIRTY-TWO THOUSAND DOLLARS*****. That's *****THIRTY TWO DOLLARS PER MAILBOX*****. That's insane. Even Microsoft doesn't charge anywhere near that much, and I think MS's products are way overpriced.
In case I haven't made my point, it's ridiculously expensive.
Oracle Collaboration Suite (Score:3, Interesting)
Groupware never got anybody laid... (Score:5, Interesting)
Groupware Bad [jwz.org]
And I said, "Jesus Mother of Fuck, what are you thinking! Do not strap the 'Groupware' albatross around your neck! That's what killed Netscape, are you insane?" He looked at me like I'd just kicked his puppy.
How about Kolab? (Score:3, Insightful)
SMTP/ IMAP predates http (Score:2)
Write some migration tools. Viola.
Or?
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please type the word in this image: rested
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I really like Exchange4Linux (Score:3, Interesting)
Exchange4Linux is an open-protocol, open-source Exchange Server replacement. It's written in Python, and the Outlook connector, while also written in Python, is not for free, but reasonably priced (small quantity price is $50 IIRC). Everything, and I mean everything is stored in a PostgreSQL database. There is something very, very cool about being able to run arbitrary SQL queries on your todos, calendars, contacts and even emails. It brings a level of data integration together that sometimes makes me want to weep. Perfect example: Our customer service department has a rotating "on-call" person. They have a calendar in which they organize who's turn it is. I query the DB once a day to let my Asterisk server know who to redirect the call to. Totally seamless, and that's just a small small example.
Neuberger-Hughes [n-h.com], the company responsible for Exchange4Linux also does the whole turnkey solution for those who want someone to yell at but still want the peace of mind that having your data in open software can only provide.
I don't work for them, I am just a happy user of their software.
Communigate gets my vote too (Score:2)
I've been running Communigate on my home system for years for myself and friends and it just works, with a small footprint and lots of features. Granted I have not run it in an enterprise environment, but I am familiar with Outlook and Exchange, and Communigate gives you what you need. Plus it can either integrate with or run its own LDAP directory, providing a lot of the same abilities as Exchange if it is run in a mostly MS or even non-MS shop.
The interface is entirely web-based, it runs on all the major
what about kolab? (Score:4, Interesting)
Yoga (Score:2)
Anyway, it was called Yoga, and its homepage [anu.edu.au] is still available.
And the reason I mention this? Well, it started off called Gnuotes, which didn't exactly trip off the tongue, and so th
Open-xchange by Netline (Score:2)
Open-Xchange? (Score:3, Informative)
Replacing Exchange isn't the real problem (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:So... (Score:2)
Re:So... (Score:5, Insightful)
Exchange Server, the Microsoft messaging and collaboration server, is software that runs on servers that enables you to send and receive electronic mail and other forms of interactive communication through computer networks. Designed to interoperate with a software client application such as Microsoft Outlook, Exchange Server also interoperates with Outlook Express and other e-mail client applications.
From wikipedia:
Microsoft now appears to be positioning a combination of Microsoft Office, Live Meeting and Sharepoint as its collaboration software of choice. Exchange is now to be simply email and calendaring.
MS prefers its clients to have to license separate software for these tasks, this allows both greater specialization and multiple revenue streams.
Re:So... (Score:2)
Re:So... (Score:2)
For the other 1% who leverage Outlook's VBA capabilities, it's actually a fairly power collaboration platform where I can build applications and work with my coworkers or other audiences to manage my tasks. I've built customer support systems, CRM tools and countless other custom one-off applications on the Outlook/Exchange platform.
And Exchange 2000 has brought even greater flex
Re:So... (Score:3, Insightful)
Replaces the meeting room (Score:5, Interesting)
What makes it so special is that it is tightly integrated with MS Office (stuff like round robin document collaboration needs Exchange to work well...it's nifty) and Active Directory integration for management, contacts, policies, etc.
There are a lot of things to get on Microsoft about, but Exchange (at least from version 2000 on) is mostly a thing of beauty. I wish my users only needed straight email, but they need to be able to things like schedule a meeting on the fly from their cell which notifys all the attending, their secretaries, etc. wo can all weigh in and do conflict resolution and get a meeting time set all while the principle in the field is talking to a client in seconds. I haven't mentioned how it all plugs into our document management system and the archiving necessary for NASD, SEC, and IRS compliance that I haven't seen from any other vendor.
If all you need is mail, you'd be insane to go the Exchange route, but if you are already building a Windows infrastructure, you'd be just as insane NOT to have Exchange.
Re:Replaces the meeting room (Score:3, Interesting)
From Wikipedia:
"Microsoft now appears to be positioning a combination of Mic
Re:Replaces the meeting room (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Replaces the meeting room (Score:2)
Re:No-nonsense e-mail for the large corporation (Score:3, Insightful)
"With the right planning and deployment, maintaining an Exchange system can be a very easy thing to do."
What's wrong with this picture?
Re:Is Outlook really the killer app? (Score:2)
Mozilla's working on Sunbird and they could potentially do something nice with Thunderbird+Sunbird, but everything's proceeding at a Mozilla-like pace so far. Version 0.2, the last I tried, was all function and no form.
* BZZT OBSCURE PROGRAM I LIKED 20 YEARS AGO HAD SOMETHING THAT OUTLOOK STOLE WHY WON'T ANYONE GIVE PROPS TO MY FAVORITE OLD PROGRAM WRONG!
Re:Is Outlook really the killer app? (Score:4, Insightful)
Name me one Windows based groupware app that you could replace Outlook with. Evolution doesn't count since it doesn't run on Windows, and is a BLATANT copy of Outlook.
Re:Is Outlook really the killer app? (Score:3, Interesting)