Zimbra an alternative to exchange?

DHR

DHR

Soldato
Joined
30 Apr 2003
Posts
3,414
Anyone started to play with this, do you really think it could be a viable alternative? How do they provide sort of "offline" usage like exchange and outlook does?
 
Caporegime
Joined
18 Oct 2002
Posts
26,053
Honestly, Exchange doesn't have any real competition at the moment. It has its flaws, sure, but it's fantastic.
 
Soldato
Joined
27 Oct 2002
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2,603
Location
Livingston
I've been playing with it occasionally at work over the last few weeks, but I've never really used Exchange so can't compare. Straightforward to install and set up at least, but I didn't really get anywhere when looking at the source. As far as I can tell, the offline usage is provided by local storage of your IMAP folders, or using POP as normal in the first place. Just got a network edition trial which has the outlook connector for syncing everything, but no-one here has used Outlook/Exchange much before, and as a small company we don't bother much with shared calendars or anything like that. The web interface is very slow on anything with <1Gb of RAM and it has slight but noticeable and annoying lag on my Athlon XP 2500, 1Gb workstation. Wasn't much slower over the wrong end of a DSL line than on the local network, so I can only assume the AJAX loaded web frontend is resource hungry.

I think it probably already is a viable alternative, but the problem for Zimbra is that Outlook is so entrenched in business that any expansion of email services and features will always favour going down the Exchange route.
 
Associate
Joined
18 Oct 2002
Posts
894
Location
Sunny South Devon
Also worth a look are www.opengroupware.org and www.phpgroupware.org. Trouble is that if you suggest anything other than Outlook to someone who has only used Outlook (with Exchange) before they burst into tears with a response of "Its far too complicated". Even if it isn't. People hate change when it comes to their PC's, even if it is for the better. Like buying me a bloody big boat rather than old Billy boy.

Trouble is Exchange and Outlook fit together like a glove and is pretty straight forward to get going and maintain. Especially when you have things like Small Business Server (which includes Exchange and Outlook) aimed squarely at the sub 75 user market and costing like £400 for every 5 users.
 
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