[HLUG] Zimbra - A real Outlook /Exchange replacement?

[Andrew Hodgson]

Alex Mace wrote:

>In the context of e-mail systems and storage in an office environment  
>then it's all stored away from your particular computer anyway.  
>Perhaps it would be nice to have the option to store all of your  
>information yourself, but I don't think that is particularly realistic.

Realistic until the l0ser who is working on the important project
forgets to do the backups, then it is the fault of the people in charge
of IT...

>I like the convenience of having all my stuff in the cloud anyway.

Hence why this domain will probably go on Google Apps later this year.
I simply can't be bothered with doing it all on my machines in the study
:).  The amount of fuss I have had with getting the email system at work
specified correctly, looking at Exchange log files, database files,
growth etc, I am seriously tempted to find an alternative solution.
However, a hosted Exchange system is quite expensive, especially if you
want to use some of the add-ons that we are looking at.  At the end of
the day it will be an email repository with a couple of folders with
calendar messages in after all, not exactly the most exciting thing in
the world.

There are many good add-ons for the Google apps services now, including
high grade email compliance solutions to on-site backups of the Gmail
store.  How well these integrate with the system in practice is another
matter.  The main issue if I was to look at Gmail for an office
environment where more than 50% of the workforce are not really IT
literate would be to get Outlook calendars and other features working
with the Gmail system with a simple plug-in kind of like how Scalix and
Zimbra does it.  At present every time I have looked at this I have seen
ways to do it, but they require a lot of configuration on the client,
which is not always feasible with all the users involved.  Plus, getting
away from PST files (which are still used in IMAP configurations in
Outlook), would be a real winner.  Outlook and IMAP on large mailboxes
don't play nicely together either, so that would be something else to
look at.

When I move our home system from Exchange, I will be moving to
Thunderbird and using Gmail IMAP.

Andrew.