[Gllug] MS Exchange - groupware replacement

[Andy Millar]

On Wed, 2009-08-05 at 16:24 +0100, Alain Williams wrote:
> I have not had a look at this area recently, I was wondering what the collected
> wisdom was on providing equvalent functionality. A customer is asking me,
> they are essentially green field: ie no MS exchange [they have mdaemon that would be replaced],
> but they use MS Outlook on the desktop. Most desktops are MS XP pro.

It pains me to suggest this, but we use Zimbra. It just about works.

> Wanted functionality
> 
> 1) Email
> 2) Groupware (mainly callendaring)
> 3) Integration with mobiles (eg blackberry)
> 
> (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.
> 
> I might try to pursuade them to move to Thunderbird rather than Outlook.

Zimbra supports this; giving you an Outlook connector for calendar,
email, and contacts sync.
Zimbra also has an awesome webmail interface.

> (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.

Zimbra also does this. As far as I'm aware, nothing Open Source as of
yet supports the MAPI protocol, so you're stuck with nasty bolt-on
connectors.

The Zimbra Connector works most of the time; but has had some epic
issues (for example, marking the sender as Unknown in users' sent items
after a MS Outlook 2007 upgrade).

> 
> (3) I know little about.

Zimbra also has a Blackberry Connector; which sits on a Windows 2003
server piggybacking on Outlook. It then, somehow, connects up with the
Blackberry Enterprise Server and you get mail to blackberries. I've
found this insanely flaky and the implementation really seems nasty. 

For non-blackberry devices, you can use ActiveSync.

All this said, if you really want Exchange functionality; you really
should use Exchange.

It performs better than Zimbra.

It's less resource hungry.

It actually provides MAPI support.

It actually has Blackberry Support - if something goes wrong, your BES
provider will not want to help you. I was on a Blackberry training
course from O2 and they were confused that I wasn't using Exchange or
Domino.

Exchange supports redundancy far better, especially with Exchange 2007.
Zimbra's only way to do redundancy is with active/passive servers and a
shared Zimbra data directory. You cannot properly do active-active
clusters like Exchange 2007.

Exchange is also cheaper :-)

Just my thoughts, as someone who's been through the fun of this in a
corporate environment.

Andy
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