SOGo and Funambol

[HazMan]

Hi all

I have been following the Openchange project for some time, and see that they have now joined forces with SOGo to provide a fully fledged Exchange replacement (or so they say ) Has anyone tried this and what are your thoughts if so? I am looking at replacing an Exchange 2003 set up with an open source alternative - have looked at Scalix and run that previously, but would also appreciate any recommendations from peeps who are actively running OSS shops.

Thanks
Haz

 

[Logo]

Haven't used Openchange and I really dislike Exchange. Two other options out there that you might want to look at is Zimbra and Citadel. Both have been getting good reviews but both have their downsides as well. It will really depend on what features you users will need.

You can also go the complete other route and setup the complete mail service making use of different applications like exim or sendmail as SMTP service, dovecot as your IMAP/POP3 server, bedework as your calendaring service, Spamassasin and ClamAV for spam and anti-virus scanning. The benefit of going this route is that you can really customize your solution, it will be extremely scalable and once setup correctly will be very stable. The downside, it is a lot of work to get it to the optimum configuration as you have to train spamassasin and the SMTP configs can get very complex depending on what you need. Also getting all these services into a single unified setup for your users can be a bit daunting.

 

[HazMan]

Hi Logo

Thanks for the feedback - I have looked at Zimbra in the past, but it has been a while, so it may be worth a look again. Spam and AV are currently handled by Untangle, so all I need is collaboration, and of course, mobile connectivity - Funambol looks to be the goods in this department. What collaboration suites have you used, if not Scalix or SOGo ?

Haz

 

[Logo]

Hi Logo

Thanks for the feedback - I have looked at Zimbra in the past, but it has been a while, so it may be worth a look again. Spam and AV are currently handled by Untangle, so all I need is collaboration, and of course, mobile connectivity - Funambol looks to be the goods in this department. What collaboration suites have you used, if not Scalix or SOGo ?

Haz

This depresses me no-end, we use GroupWise

 

[HazMan]

Sorry to hear that - you still have all your hair?

 

[nic777]

I have been looking at Zarafa which tons of features, although the more advanced ones are not totally free but not too expensive either, compared to Exchange. http://www.zarafa.com/content/products http://www.zarafa.com/content/editions

 

[kingrob]

Zimbra is the best alternative to Exchange.

We used Funambol to sync with our eGroupware server & it worked very well.

 

[HazMan]

Zimbra is the best alternative to Exchange.

We used Funambol to sync with our eGroupware server & it worked very well.

Kingrob, are you using Zimbra currently, and if so, how would you rate its interaction with Outlook?

Thanks for your feedback

 

[kingrob]

Kingrob, are you using Zimbra currently, and if so, how would you rate its interaction with Outlook?

Thanks for your feedback

No, not using Zimbra currently. We eventually "canned" the project, as the boss wanted the mail server to sync with his mobile phone when he's away on business trips & couldn't do that with open source Zimbra.

You need to start paying licence fees for the Zimbra connectors if you want it to be able to sync with mobile phones, etc. - and then it actually becomes expensive. I think it's ok with Outlook, but we felt it a bit limiting going into the unknown future, where smartphones will play a bigger & bigger role.

There's a reason why Exchange server is the world's nr 1 mail server - and I'm NOT saying it to suck up to Microsoft. I tested all the alternatives & none of them really fulfilled our needs.

 

[HazMan]

So how would you rate Funambol vs native ActiveSync ?

 

[kingrob]

Here you go for a comparison of all the different Zimbra products :

http://www.zimbra.com/products/compare_products.html

 

[kingrob]

So how would you rate Funambol vs native ActiveSync ?

Funambol was very good!

Like I said, we used it to sync our calendars and contact lists between the eGroupware server and Outlook client.

But I did struggle a bit to make it work....think I had to use an older version of Funambol before it would work with Outlook & a few undocumented config changes on the eGroupware server.

 

[HazMan]

Hmmm - that seems to be a fairly common issue with the OSS groupware stacks - they really need to get something that will "just work" Scalix was actually quite good in that respect, relatively simple scripted install and very little tweaking required. But Scalix uses an Outlook connector, and their SmartCache gave me a pain

 

[kingrob]

Hmmm - that seems to be a fairly common issue with the OSS groupware stacks - they really need to get something that will "just work" Scalix was actually quite good in that respect, relatively simple scripted install and very little tweaking required. But Scalix uses an Outlook connector, and their SmartCache gave me a pain

True that. But if you don't have a budget to work with, you must just get it to work. As they say, you get what you pay for.

 

[HazMan]

True that. But if you don't have a budget to work with, you must just get it to work. As they say, you get what you pay for.

yeah, well... I am kinda pinning my hopes on Openchange and Samba4, but development is soooooo slow. I know they have limited resources, but hell...

 

[kingrob]

yeah, well... I am kinda pinning my hopes on Openchange and Samba4, but development is soooooo slow. I know they have limited resources, but hell...

That's what frustrated the crap out of me....and the boss becoming very hostile.

The boss didn't want to hear that he will have to wait for the developers to get a move on - he wants it right now.

 

[HazMan]

Yep - when all is said and done, that's Microsoft's strong point - stuff generally just works. Exchange 2003 is just so solid - apart from the odd database corruption, it just sits there and works.

 

[kingrob]

Yep - when all is said and done, that's Microsoft's strong point - stuff generally just works. Exchange 2003 is just so solid - apart from the odd database corruption, it just sits there and works.

You should play around with Exchange 2010, very nice.

 

[kingrob]

Other nice thing about Exchange is the pricing.

You buy the Exchange license + client licences and that's it, but with Zimbra there's a yearly cost and you never stop paying.

 

[HazMan]

You buy the Exchange license + client licences and that's it, but with Zimbra there's a yearly cost and you never stop paying.

Either that, or you pay for all the add-ons - Active Sync, BB, Outlook Connectors...