Re: [PLUG] Anyone tried replacing Exchange lately?

[Chris Hedemark <chrish@trilug.org>]

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On Wednesday, April 16, 2003, at 02:37 PM, W. Chris Shank wrote:

> I need to replace a MS Exchange 5.5 server and was wondering if anyone 
> has
> any hands on experience with the alternatives, including: Bynari, 
> Samsung
> Contact, Kolab, SuSE Openexchange, others?

You don't know how much I'd love to right now.  Exchange is proving to 
be terribly expensive to us when you figure in admin overhead, 
downtime, etc.

I put the SuSE option in front of $BOSS as something to explore but 
methinks it is too thick a political issue to ever be explored 
(replacing Exchange would, in effect, put egg on the face of whoever 
wanted Exchange there in the first place).  So we go on living with an 
intermittently functional groupware server.

> Luckily - for my implimenation, I only need to replace these functions 
> in
> Exchange: email, vacation calendar, shared contacts database. So I 
> think
> it would be easier for me to use a collection of alternatives instead 
> of
> one massive tool, but it might be nice to be able to continue to use
> Outlook (though not a requirement).

The moment you say that you can live with a loose collection of smaller 
tools for each function is the moment a whole new world of 
possibilities opens up.

I've been increasingly becoming a fan of LDAP for this sort of thing.  
Use a loose collection of tools that all store stuff in LDAP to tie 
them together.  Not saying mail gets stored in LDAP, but certainly 
metadata can go there about the user.
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