What is Digg?59 Comments
- Rice, on 10/12/2007, -3/+34Let the games begin. It's about time, I say. Competition is always a good thing... always.
- sdwilly, on 10/12/2007, -4/+18Why do you loathe Exchange? I'm really just curious, I'll take my Exchange system any day over the Groupwise or Domino Systems I used to deal with.
- chris4404, on 10/12/2007, -5/+15An Open Source guys says Open source is growing who'd a thunk it. We'll be sticking with Exchange because of Active Directory.
- jchri09, on 10/12/2007, -8/+17I doubt exchange will be going anywhere. I love it!!!
We use MS communicator here to exchange IM's to each other on the corporate network. When you get an email it has a pretty light above the message that tells you the status of the person that emailed you. Online/away/in a meeting etc. Really cool.
In the olden days I was a big fan of Sendmail and Postfix but times have changed and so have the needs. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -7/+16Never heard about any of the options listed. All corporations I know use either MS Exchange (primarily) or Domino servers...
- kurtcocain, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8There's no numbers here - looks like someone just felt like writing a story around the same day that ComputerWorld wrote a glowing review of Exchange 2007. Mind you, the computerworld articles were lame too... The thing I don't get is that everyone keeps calling Scalix and OpenXchange "Exchange killers"; they're not - they're Exchange wannabees.
Zimbra, IMHO, is the first real step in challenging Exchange - we just have to wait and see if it scales. People piss and moan over Exchange all day long - "it's great" or "it sucks". The real debate is Outlook. If the end users can get reliable outlook-like functionality out of another platform, Exchange will die; problem is, no one's come up with a reliable alternative - plenty of Outlook connectors, but none that works well - soup to nuts (Mobile integration, calendar integration, Contacts, etc.). As a back-end, Exchange is mediocre at best - the I/O is very costly, the standards support is so-so and scalability is improving; management in large infrastructures is a real PITA and reliability is slightly better than the 5.5 and 2000 versions. DR and business continuance are real pains in the butt and can be costly. This is where Zimbra shines - extensibility and administration can be coded in easily since it's OSS and provides the hooks. Also, it will run on any J2EE platform and relies on a trusted MTA (Postfix) to do the delivery right. - soulfire, on 10/12/2007, -3/+10The amount of time to convert to one of these for most IT departments would not make it worth switching over.
- fatdog789, on 10/12/2007, -3/+10Exchange is a good habit to keep. I've had experience with these so-called Exchange-killers, and they're still in their diapers. Maybe in a decade or two they'll be able to take on what Exchange is *now,* but they are far from competing with Exchange on any sort of playing field.
I do find it interesting that some of the best competitors to Exchange aren't listed (ie, the ones that actually do give Exchange a run for its money among the cost-conscious), like the KDE project's Exchange clone.
Marked inaccurate. - JackDoyle, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7Other good alternatives are MDaemon 9.0.1 Pro, Ipswitch Collaboration Suite 2006 Premium Edition, or Kerio MailServer 6. All are worthy commercial products that are much less costly than Microsoft Exchange.
- krakelohm, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7I think the key is not necessarily converting current Exchange customers. It is to get the people that are currently looking to implement something, a nice alternative to Exchange at the start of the project.
- MattS, on 10/12/2007, -2/+8Now if someone would please make an Outlook replacement - we'd be all set. Before you tell me about Thunderbird - I'm looking for a robust PIM - not just a mail client.
- TimDigg, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6I wish they had a better name than "openxchange"
then you create the image that its basically exchange for free...instead of a new and exciting product
The OSS movment needs marketing people badly!! - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7We did try Zimbra out, it was horrible. Constant problems, the Outlook integration is practically nonexistant (despite what they say on the web page). Several of our 30ish machines just would NOT allow the plugin to install (and offered no real useful feedback about why).
Migrating users over was also near impossible if they had more than a few hundred messages and/or calendar entries. - spyrochaete, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6I'd like my next product to actually compete with the top players, not just have a foot in the door. Exchange is a powerful and secure framework that works in tandem with dozens of servers. Getting Kerberos, LDAP, and Active Directory working with Linux is incredibly difficult and less functional.
- trollenlord, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Evolution has three problems. First of all, it doesn't have proper s/mime support using the smartcards. Don't laugh, it's important for many large enterprise setups. You can use the national ID cards and company cards to get SSO to all the systems in a really secure way. Furthermore you can sign and encrypt your email in a way that is extremely secure. Thunderbird has that feature, Evolution doesn't.
Second, I haven't noticed Evolution supporting easy zero configuration. "Find out who is sitting at the front of computer, find out the setup for this user, launch the application with it", bringing all the correct stuff. For instance Outlook has this (when using their own protocols etc) and it makes the administrative tasks more robust.
Third, Evolution uses GTK. It's very nice on Linux, especially on Gnome. However it looks and feels alien on a Windows desktop. It just isn't right and bugs the users. GTK-WIMP has been practically unmaintained and often falls back into the dummy Windows 2000ish look. Especially the dropdown menus are absolutely horrible monsters. No way Evolution is getting on any desktops around here until it gets fixed. - Sferrero, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4I don't know about corporate, but for non-profits exchange is CHEAP as are all Microsoft Products.
- grendelboogie, on 10/12/2007, -3/+7Zimbra is also a very nice Exchange alternative. Check them out if you want to try something different that works very well with multiple OS environments.
- azpat, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6It's only taken, what, 10 years, to start to get a foot in this door ? That in itself is a story worth writing. Wouldn't you like your next product to be that successful?
- MrTranscendence, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5Well - there *is* Novell Evolution, which is being ported to Windows:
http://evolution-win32.sourceforge.net/
But it's not that great. - Piglith, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4CommuniGate has builds for just about every platform. All the wonderful features Exchange and many other email servers. Talks to Outlook with MAPI. LDAP/RADIUS, Calendar standard. Web mail, Also VoIP/SIP (Voice,Messaging, and Video). Simple Web Administration interface. Very easy to use, yet complicated enough to do anything.
Awesome Anti-Spam filtering and Multiple Anti-Virus plug-ins.
I'm not trying to sell people on this. But I think more people should seriously look at what it has to offer. Price is a little high (compared to some) but still cheaper then Exchange in end. - kurtcocain, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4@chris404:
B/C of AD, really ? There are better ways to integrate your mailsystem to your directory than the way they've done with AD. B/C AD, you cannot merge two different Exchange ORGS w/o a full blown migration....take a look at Zimbra and mailers like Qmail-LDAP to see how integration with an LDAP directory can be done right. If you think Exchange is the only mailsystem that leverages AD, think again. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4@chris4404: OX is supposed to feature alot of AD integration in it's latest release. That was a big sticker for us in the past, and eventually we'll be moving to it. For now we're in the same boat as you, using Exchange to handle all this collaboration stuff.
- MrTranscendence, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4Same goal, wrong project, sorry.
http://shellter.sourceforge.net/evolution/ - skaface69, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2We use exchange 2003 and it works like a charm. Another post pointed out that most companies of any salt use either exchange or domino. They have the market share because they are good products. It would take some serious explaining to get a company to completely switch from one of the messaging suites to open source software, then if you did you would lose functionality, like the AD integration. its cool that other companies are making a piece of software to compete with MS and Lotus, but for something as important as a messaging program, but companies are too locked into their messaging programs that a major switch would never happen.
- spyrochaete, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Such an organization had better plan ahead to make their infrastructure compatible with extraneous servers. Exchange already does that exceptionally well. You need some real Linux gurus to get open source alternatives to interoperate.
- emer, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2You hear this argument a lot and commonly it comes from inexperienced or untrained admins. The problem with exchange is that its quite easy to get started with. So someone who's never worked with it before will put in place but when issues arise they blame the product instead of realizing that they were ill prepared.
- StudsTurkel, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I don't know about IPSwitch Collaboration. We moved from Imail 8.1, to their new and "improved" collaboration suite. It took quite a while for everything to get settled down, but since then it hasn't been too bad. Although IPSwitch's message boards are full of horror stories from larger companies/ISPs that made the switch and then ended up switching back to 8.1. They also issued a few updates that made things a lot worse for many people, but the latest 2006.4a seems to be pretty stable. The calendar sharing is nice (not as good as exchange.) The IM server/client suck, and are not in production here.
- nil8r209, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3@kurtcocain
Check out the largest corporations and what they use for messaging. Exchange is as scalable as anything out there, if not more so. - twylight, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3Our exchange clusters have been up longer than this company crawled to a banker for burn money. Of everything M$ has done right, Exchange 2003 just about tops the list.
Go after IE, not AD/Exchange/Server. - geronimo, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I tried zimbra thanks to some digg comments awhile back.
After 2 hours I got it set up on multiple domains, GUI administration, mailing lists, inbound, outbound, SSL non-SSL, anti-spam features. What more can you ask for? - nofxjunkee, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1And I thought I was a pedant... *sigh* ok, here:
RTFA, no one's promoting sendmail or postfix _alone_ as a replacement. - PhillyMJS, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2@nofxjunkee:
Nobody mentioned in the article, maybe, but OS X Server uses postfix. Together with other components that will be new in 10.5 Server, Apple appears to have assembled a decent Exchange replacement--- for the SMB market, at the very least. I'm looking very forward to evaluating it to see how it measures up. - OBKenobi, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1News has been slow this week.
It's not really that bad of a story. People should know that these Exchange killers are in development. Maybe more will join in that development so Exchange could be killed. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I love Zimbra... suits the needs of my company extremely well, even on just the open source (free as in beer as well) version.
- BigJuiceMan, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1If they were reeeeeally clever, they'd whip together a VMWare Server Appliance and sell it as their turn-key solution. THAT would be something I could get hard about.
- sorti, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1It’s not exchange but outlook in native exchange mode that people like, IMAP/POP under outlook is nothing like the native exchange access mode.
If you want to take out exchange you need to server the outlook client software as if you were an exchange server NOT IMAP/POP.
The price of exchange server is not that bad, the standard version is less then $700 but you have to pay for a client license for each device that attaches to the server. - llbbl, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Scalix offers alot. I would think that anyone would think twice about using exchange.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Competition is almost always a good thing.... however they're going to have a LONG way to go. IT admins for the most part really really like Exchange. I've found it to be one of MS's better products for sure.
- xfTwitch, on 10/12/2007, -6/+6Note: they don't actually say what the market penetration is.... Just that it represents a "Significant" number....
Market speak.
I loath exchange as much as the next guy, but c'mon... - skaface69, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0the software itself is roughly $1000 plus windows server to run it, but where it gets expensive is in the licensing. You have to have one license for one email account sort of. I'm not quit sure about MS licensing, for example I'm the admin for roughly 70 users, and i have 65 licenses installed and I'm only using 40 of them. It doesn't add up, but it works for us.
- Kanundra, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1spammer
- ednopantz, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Is Exchange considered expensive for corporate customers?
- Blackforge, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Communigate does not talk MAPI, it uses a program installed on each workstation and converts it into IMAP.
http://www.stalker.com/CommuniGatePro/MAPI.html
Each product I've come across that allows a more full-blow Outlook experience uses some type of connector on the workstation itself that integrates with Outlook (Outlook service connector/provider). Scalix and Samsung Contact (both HP Openmail based products) do the same type of thing. Unfortunately you can wind up doing something in Outlook that isn't quite compatible with the connector service. Plus I've always had the POV, support-wise, the less added into Outlook the better. - aonaran, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1I think right now "just like exchange but free" is the image they are TRYING to impress in people's minds. Most companies are happy with Exchange but grumble about it's licensing costs. The ones who are just about fed up with the costs might just take a look at something that sounds like the same but free.
- Blisshead, on 10/12/2007, -5/+5Sometimes the IT dept, may be willing, but the bean counters are scared to take the risk even if it means long and short term windfall.
- CircleFusion, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1"Competition is always a good thing...always"
"Unless its competition for your wife..."
Actually, I think damonic makes a good point (although crudely).
I don't like blanket statements like "competition is always a good thing" because that simply isn't true. I would say that competition is usually a good thing (which is basically what skyshock21 said). - mpeters13, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1Mmmmmhmm... right. I'll believe it when I see it. But believe me... after our exchange server getting hit with a bad Microsoft update the other day that left me working overtime, I'm open arms. (Killed our blackberries, webmail... everything...) lawd.
- uownedge, on 10/12/2007, -3/+2We recently switched to Exchange 2003. It was the most expensive mistake our company ever made. It was one of those things that the higher ups (non-technical staff) thought would be a good investment since it was made by Microsoft (so obviously it was the best thing out there for the task!). Sadly, it's the wrong tool for the job, and has caused more problems in the last few months than our old system did the entire time I've been here.
Exchange is good in the right environment, but it's not always the best answer. - natsmith1, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0i'm curious how this has been one of the top digs of the day and its such a boring story with only 500 or so digs
-or sum junk - zlemonz, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0If only one of these alternate solutions would support non-win32 clients. Scalix and Zimbra support Outlook as a fat client, but offer little to no support for Entourage or Apple Mail/iCal. If you want all the features that Exchange offers out of the box, the price is almost the same, so you really aren't saving much money.
Currently, the only groupware platform that offers shared calandering, delegation and other important groupware features for OS X is Exchange/Entourage. At least, that's what I've found. -
Show 51 - 58 of 58 discussions
Browsing Digg on your phone just got easier with our enhancements to the 
© Digg Inc. 2009
— Content created and posted by Digg users is