[Gllug] MS Exchange - groupware replacement

[Joel Bernstein]

On 5 Aug 2009, at 16:24, Alain Williams wrote:
> Wanted functionality
> 1) Email
Google.
> 2) Groupware (mainly callendaring)
Google.
> 3) Integration with mobiles (eg blackberry)
Google.

Out of curiousity, how many users?

> (1) In the first instance I would be inclined to install: exim &  
> dovecot; with squirrelmail
> for those who want webmail (eg from home). I would prob put user  
> registration in an OpenLDAP
> database for when we get them to move data files from multiple C:  
> drives onto Samba
> $HOMEs (a gleam in the eye of their IT man). This is all reasonably  
> easy.

Squirrelmail is horrendous. Your users will be used to modern webmail  
that doesn't suck. They will hate you for this.

Again, unless your client has an inhouse, RFC-cognizant, bastard email  
operator from hell, it's unlikely to be cost-effective to pay you for  
regular email work in comparison to outsourcing it to Google.

> I might try to pursuade them to move to Thunderbird rather than  
> Outlook.

It's all IMAP, what does it matter? Let the users use whatever MUA  
they like. I suspect you'll find most will use the gmail/gcal/... web  
interface, but there's CalDAV and IMAP for the power users who want  
desktop apps..

> (2) I have done before using web apps (eg Horde); if they keep  
> outlook then I need something
>    that speaks the dreaded MAPI protocol. All the plugins seem  
> proprietary.

If you are seriously suggesting inflicting Horde IMP on people who've  
paid for a company email service, you must be having a laugh. Will  
they pay for the 16-way server to run its horrid bloatware for more  
than a half dozen simultaneous users?

> (3) I know little about.
>
> So: what is best server side to do this ?

Somebody else's servers, frankly.

/joel

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