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

[Andrew Hodgson]

Alex Mace wrote:

>On 27 Jun 2008, at 22:30, Andrew Hodgson wrote:

[...]

>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.

>I think they're pretty easy to use, but I also know that the IT people  
>would get the blame if there were any problems...

Evolution in Ubuntu is not dissimilar to Outlook, and I think that many people who are used to using Outlook daily would have no issue switching to it.  I use it on my Ubuntu system with no issue connecting to the Exchange server here.  If I had several users who only used web apps to do most of their work, I would seriously look at this option with a lower grade desktop machine.  This is infact what Specsavers did, convert their user base to using RHEL desktop with a Scalix backend.  One of the reasons they did this was apparently due to the differences in Vista and Office 2007 requiring the same training costs as moving to an open source system.

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

>Good choice - I used to run Postfix at home and while the server  
>itself ran fine it was pretty difficult to get it to run reliably on a  
>consumer ADSL service when you have fairly frequent power cuts. The  
>convenience of Google Apps is great.

Actually we have quite good uptime on my boxes, my FreeBSD Postfix spam scanner - running on a 190 quid Via machine I got 3 years ago with 1GB RAM has now been up for just over 204 days (since before Christmas!), and my cheap Exchange server running a low-end Intel Pentium 4 (does have HT), and 1GB RAM only reboots when doing critical updates.  I got a cheap £40 UPS around 3 years ago, when I built all this stuff up.  Granted, the router does go down during powercuts, been up for just over 40 days since the last one :).  I think that is higher than any machine I have at work - including the Linux machines - due to the frequent Kernel updates RedHat has pushed out recently.

Andrew.