MS Exchange alternatives

mambo50

Hi,
I currently exploring a range of MS Exchange 5.5 alternatives for my employer. The continued support of current outlook users is a must. I´ve tried Suse Openexchange, Bynari and exchange4linux.
Anyway, does anyone have any experience migrating from exchange ?. What were your experiences and what product did you choose ?.

BenH

I run 2 SLOX servers, and although the migration toolkits are still in the works some 18 months later, SLOX itself is a superb product on the client side. On the server side it quickly becomes apparent that the groupware and mail are too completely different systems glued together with perl scripts, which makes certain little things such as changing a username far, far more difficult than need be. It can also be a bit of a pain to write scripts for and there are a few things that really annoy me such as LDAP and Samba being crippled.

Still if you can live for a few months without having to transfer all the exchange mail into slox and break your users dependance on outlook I think its the best commercial linux mailserver available.

Regards,

Ben

Sleipnir

I use Imail cos it's cheap and easy.
http://www.ipswitch.com/products/imail_server/index.html

Capt'n Midnight

Do the exchange users use any of the groupware features (shared folders/public folders/address lists/delegates/replication to various sites etc.) or is it just used as for SMTP email ?

Have a look at MDaemon too - not free but a tiny fraction of the price of exchange and has some groupware features exchange users may have come to expect.

Outlook is a terrible IMAP client BTW. so bad that it's almost as if they don't want you to use anything other than exchange.

leeroybrown

Capt'n Midnight wrote:

Outlook is a terrible IMAP client BTW.

Seeing as I have to use OutHouse/LookOut at work (a big step down from mutt) ,I think that it is just terrible mail client full stop.

Batbat

mambo50 wrote:

Hi,
I currently exploring a range of MS Exchange 5.5 alternatives for my employer. The continued support of current outlook users is a must. I´ve tried Suse Openexchange, Bynari and exchange4linux.
Anyway, does anyone have any experience migrating from exchange ?. What were your experiences and what product did you choose ?.

Im looking at CommuniGate Pro, it has proper Outlook support, ie, it does not need to use IMAP, it supports MAPI

mambo50

Thanks guys,
I´m afraid our outlook users are already addicted to the groupware features, for booking meetings etc.
Communigate pro looks interesting so íll check that out.
My fave is still SLOX. However i wish they had better migration tools and a better outlook connector.
I´m beginning to think it might be best to stick it out with exchange for another 12-18 months. There are a number of interesting projects such as http://www.exchange4linux.com and http://kolab.org/ that will someday provide a OSS linux groupware solution with a free OSS outlook connector someday. Then exchange can be dumped.
I await that day.

Typedef

Huh?

Postfix - SMTP
IMAPD - bog standard Red Hat Version
LDAP - whichever

http://techno.isafeelin.org/~joenix/vriesman.tk/postfix-courier-ldap-howto.html

Blah, you're done.

There's even some calendaring stuff on sourceforge.

MS exchange is *not* a solution... it's a continuous problem.
Also, with exchange 5.5, you'll find that Microsoft's chosen bugfix policy is 'upgrade and pay us', for bugs which were introduced in service pack 2 and never got fixed in the next three service packs.

You don't need a connector to integrate Outlook/Express with a Linux server, with SMTP, IMAP, POP3 and whatever calendaring you choose to use say the newly released Firebird calendaring stuff as a standalone called sunbird
http://www.mozilla.org/projects/calendar/sunbird.html , or as a hook into thunderbird al la plugin magic.

I think you should try a little harder in replacing exchange.
Having Administered *both* systems, I'd take the Linux alternative *anytime* the choice was mine.

Syth

Outlook : A huge security hole with a small email client attached.

I shook a magic 8 ball today and it said "outlook not so good".

BenH

Typedef I agree with everything you say, but things are never that simple thanks to politics.

Currently I'm in the process of migrating a school to a dual boot enviroment (you can read my 4 hr long interview reduced to 2 paragraphs in this months linux format pro suppliment) and introduce open source and linux based software wherever possible.

To that end we replaced exchange 5.5 with SLOX. The staff that only used the outlook web interface love it, those who had lookout for the most part really dont like it, because they used the mail accounts for filing. Given the MS induced problems with the replicator we tried to get them to use Thunderbird with mozcal, but the complaints became - "It doesnt look the same" or "its confusing".

Users passionatly hate change, even when at another school I replaced some ancient win98 machines with new builds running Xp I still recieved complaints because when I set the machines up (a long and painful process even with Ghost) I didnt put all the icons on the desktop for Office. And when the users have the ear of management, forgettaboutit.

Still the only members of staff who will be using KDE will be IT Staff, so they should be able to handle it.

Typedef

Oh I understand that the technically illiterate sometimes think they have valid technical views and that yes, unfortunately, you can't just kill irritating people.

That said, you present them with an excel spreadsheet, with lots of columns that *shows* how a Linux server locked in a dark room can magic coffee to their desktops and they'll believe it.

I also understand that if the classic means of starting a program had been sifting through subdirectories to double click on it and suddenly the start menu had appeared, that there'd be hell to pay.

That said, make as much choice for yourself as you can... I don't tell accounts or sales how to do their jobs and their self preservations instincts keep them from telling me how to do mine...

But in case a wayward middle entry person wanders into my domain... I have a clipping from a magazine subtely placed at eye level.

It's a typical national park type poster, you know green background, white writing... with a picture of a man with a stick and a bear/lion of some sort, with a caption that reads
"Please Refrain. From irritating large man eating animals".

If that doesn't get the point across... then the necklace made of middle management ears and lips I wear as trophies around my neck *will*... or you will join the collection.

Use Linux, you'll live longer.
*grin*.

nadir

Syth wrote:

Outlook : A huge security hole with a small email client attached.

I shook a magic 8 ball today and it said "outlook not so good".

aha

thats funny
/me chuckles

mambo50

Thanks for that link typedef. I'm in the process of planning the backoffice for a new production facility so i would hope to deploy a system like this for email. New users won't by tied to outlook so that makes things much easier.
I already use postfix with amavis-new, spamassassin, clamd, DCC, Razor to filter our incoming mail. Would'nt want to expose Exchange to the big bad world of the internet now would we.
BTW. Anyone have experience deploying a samba domain with an ldap backend ?

BenH

As it happens, yes. What would you like to know?

Batbat

Typedef wrote:

Huh?

Postfix - SMTP
IMAPD - bog standard Red Hat Version
LDAP - whichever

http://techno.isafeelin.org/~joenix/vriesman.tk/postfix-courier-ldap-howto.html

Blah, you're done.

There's even some calendaring stuff on sourceforge.

MS exchange is *not* a solution... it's a continuous problem.
Also, with exchange 5.5, you'll find that Microsoft's chosen bugfix policy is 'upgrade and pay us', for bugs which were introduced in service pack 2 and never got fixed in the next three service packs.

You don't need a connector to integrate Outlook/Express with a Linux server, with SMTP, IMAP, POP3 and whatever calendaring you choose to use say the newly released Firebird calendaring stuff as a standalone called sunbird
http://www.mozilla.org/projects/calendar/sunbird.html , or as a hook into thunderbird al la plugin magic.

I think you should try a little harder in replacing exchange.
Having Administered *both* systems, I'd take the Linux alternative *anytime* the choice was mine.

he said Outlook support is a must, which excluded IMAP because Outlook is **** with IMAP (probably by design), pop3 is out of the question because mail would go to the client and you would loose webmail usage