Follow Slashdot blog updates by subscribing to our blog RSS feed

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
Software Technology

Comcast Goes to Zimbra 143

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the exchange-assassination dept.
tenchiken writes "Zimbra, an Open Source enterprise messaging app, just scored a major win. Comcast will be moving mail services to Zimbra for all of their customers. Zimbra has been picking up steam for a while now, and appears to really be challenging Microsoft in a area that Exchange has been dominated in. Add in support for Samba Domain Controllers and Linux Authentication, Offline Access and Evolution Support and we might finally have our long desired Open Source Exchange killer."
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Comcast Goes to Zimbra More

Comcast Goes to Zimbra

Comments Filter:

  • Listen to those Talking Heads: (Score:5, Funny)

    by smittyoneeach ( 243267 ) * on Monday May 07, 2007 @01:13PM (#19023325) Homepage Journal
    gadji beri bimba clandridi
    lauli lonni cadori gadjam
    a bim beri glassala glandride
    e glassala tuffm i zimbra

    bim blassa galassasa zimbrabim
    blassa glallassasa zimbrabim

    a bim beri glassala grandrid
    e glassala tuffm i zimbra

    gadji beri bimba glandridi
    lauli lonni cadora gadjam
    a bim beri glassasa glandrid
    e glassala tuffm i zimbra

  • err, what? (Score:5, Funny)

    by cosmocain ( 1060326 ) on Monday May 07, 2007 @01:15PM (#19023373)

    and appears to really be challenging Microsoft in a area that Exchange has been dominated in.


    there ARE areas in life where you should NEVER EVER mix this one up. ;)
  • ... this is successful. I would like to see (and have) other options available besides Exchange. Choice leads to competition, which gives innovation a kick in the pants and keeps prices in check. I just hope the switchover doesn't cause problems for my clients who currently use Comcast for e-mail services.
    • Um, there are hundreds of options available besides Exchange.

      But, if you want to have something that actually embodies the few good features of Exchange without having to accept the fundamentally bad design and poor scalability, you should probably look at scalix [scalix.com].

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by aztracker1 ( 702135 )
      IIRC the plugin for Outlook (yeah, some people will still be using windows) isn't Free(Open-Source/GPL) and Evolution is Linux-Only afaik. There are some people that would switch their servers in a heartbeat, but given the commercial licensing costs of Zimbra, I couldn't recommend it over Windows Server (Web Edition) + SmarterMail... If I could get similar features in free/opensource software, for licensing costs that are less than web edition and smartermail, I would switch in a heartbeat.

      I fully real
      • I've run Evolution on Linux, Solaris and Windows, so it's definitely not Linux only. All it needs is the Gnome framework to run, so anything you can build gnome-libs on, you can run Evolution on. Also, according to Gentoo, the Exchange Connector is GPL2.

        $ grep LICENSE /usr/portage/gnome-extra/evolution-exchange/evolut ion-exchange-2.10.1.ebuild
        LICENSE="GPL-2"

  • Comcast (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    They have been know to make horrible technology decisions in the past.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Avatar8 ( 748465 )
      Agreed.

      Regardless of how bulletproof, flawless or otherwise outstanding Zimbra may be, Comcast will likely screw up the implementation in such a way as to reflect badly on Zimbra and ostracize even more of their customers in the process.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by cHiphead ( 17854 )
      True, but my 10mbit home cable modem gives me hope.

      Cheers.

  • Oh my aching grammar! (Score:4, Informative)

    by swajr ( 992561 ) on Monday May 07, 2007 @01:22PM (#19023497)
    Original:

    Zimbra has been picking up steam for a while now, and appears to really be challenging Microsoft in a area that Exchange has been dominated in.
    Fixed:

    Zimbra has been picking up steam for a while now, and appears to be challenging Microsoft in an area that Exchange has dominated.
    Maybe I'm a huge nerd, but grammatical errors like these drive me crazy!

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by swajr ( 992561 )
      Here I am correcting another person's grammar, and my own correction has a flaw too. That comma in the middle of the sentence should be omitted. Oops! ;)

      • Recursive grammar fixing (Score:3, Funny)

        by Anonymous Coward
        I particularly liked the way you corrected your correction with a sentence that again demonstrated your previous error. DEATH TO EXCESSIVE CURSOR USAGE!

    • Maybe I'm a huge nerd...
      Maybe?!

    • Re: (Score:1, Redundant)

      by symbolic ( 11752 )
      Better:

      Zimbra has been picking up steam for a while now, and appears to be challenging Microsoft in an area dominated by Exchange.

      • Re: (Score:1, Redundant)

        by $RANDOMLUSER ( 804576 )
        I suspect it was supposed to be:

        ...and appears to really be challenging Microsoft in an area that Exchange has been dominant in.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by symbolic ( 11752 )
          You have a dangling preposition, which isn't correct grammar ('in' at the end of the sentence). "...an area in which Exhange has been dominant" would be correct.

    • Re: (Score:1, Redundant)

      by Stinking Pig ( 45860 )
      grammar errors are annoying... a logical error in which the meaning is reversed is beyond annoying, especially in a forum of admins, coders and wannabe coders.

      "...area that Exchange has been dominated in." means Exchange is losing
      "...area that Exchange has dominated in." means Exchange is winning /cue submitter's annoyed "I barely speak english and you people are being unfair" message in 5, 4, 3...

    • Original:

      Zimbra has been picking up steam for a while now, and appears to really be challenging Microsoft in a area that Exchange has been dominated in.

      Fixed:

      Zimbra has been picking up steam for a while now, and appears to be challenging Microsoft in an area that Exchange has dominated.

      I'm not so sure about this. The last I looked at the numbers, Exchange had about 40% of the total e-mail server market, and only a tiny fraction of the commercial e-mail service to end user market; seeing as Exchange's stronghold has been within medium and large business operations. Maybe the original was more correct than your version.

  • Anyone here have any experiances with Zimbra? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Darundal ( 891860 ) on Monday May 07, 2007 @01:23PM (#19023523) Journal
    What is it like setting up, using, maintaining, etc...?

    • Re:Anyone here have any experiances with Zimbra? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Da Fokka ( 94074 ) on Monday May 07, 2007 @01:28PM (#19023603) Homepage
      We (a small IT company) have been using it for a couple of months now and my experiences are very good. Of course I don't know how well Zimbra will scale, but for us it works really wel. I do have some minor complaints (for instance, when creating a new mail filter I'd like to have the option to apply the filter to the existing e-mails), but on the whole I'm quite content.

    • Re:Anyone here have any experiances with Zimbra? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by QuantumRiff ( 120817 ) on Monday May 07, 2007 @01:30PM (#19023637)
      I found it pretty simple. They have a pre-configured VMWare image you can download and play with, I found it incredibly handy and quick to play with. Seems pretty promising, but I don't know if I like the "offline client" it is a resource hog.. I would love to see them add a plugin for the thunderbird-sunbird calendar tools.

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Doppleganger ( 66109 )
        You can use sunbird/lightning just fine with Zimbra's iCal support, no additional plugin needed. The only thing lacking is the ability to send out meeting invites, but that doesn't seem to be in sunbird yet. Is there any other support you've found missing?

        • Re:Anyone here have any experiances with Zimbra? (Score:4, Informative)

          by larkost ( 79011 ) on Monday May 07, 2007 @02:06PM (#19024317)
          Except that Zimbra uses iCal, not CalDAV, so you can't use the calendars from multiple computers at once. They do have a really nice iSync plugin on the Mac side that allows you to sync your calendars out of iCal.app, and that winds up having the same effect.

          I am trying to get them to allow you to disable the automatic event notification emails that go out to people you put on the events (this is really annoying when you want to do these notifications yourself).
          • Zimbra can use multiple calendars, and the beginnings of CALDAV is in the source tree as well.
      • If you are on a slower client, you now have the option of selecting 'Basic Client' when logging in - it's MUCH faster. The functionality is close to that of Exchange 2000's web component, not much interactivity, but when you're on a slow computer it's handy.

        We've been using Zimbra for over a year now and I'm totally blown away by how much the system is continually improved upon. The Basic Client is a terrific example of how Zimbra user's needs are being gauged and met by the organization. Outstanding!

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by masonjd ( 657070 )
      I've installed the Open Source version and am using it for my family email. It works great. The web interface is really impressive but I also have some family members connecting Thunderbird to it and it works without a hitch. Set up was a breeze. I used a HowToForge guide [howtoforge.com] and it worked great. As for maintaining, the forums have been extremely useful. Overall I'm very pleased.

    • Re:Anyone here have any experiances with Zimbra? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Not_Wiggins ( 686627 ) on Monday May 07, 2007 @02:27PM (#19024679) Journal
      If you're setting this up for a small outfit (like, I host email for my friends/family), then the minimum requirements may be a bit high (cached link here. [64.233.167.104]) On an Intel 32-bit machine (recommended at least 2GHz):
      minimum memory: 2G
      recommended memory: 4G.

      That's for a box dedicated to being a mail server and webmail/calendaring client (forget about sharing it with other hosting needs, like a Webserver).

      For a company (small or whatever), having a dedicated box for this sort of thing is reasonable and expected... and, please forgive the pun, the suite looks sweet. 8)

      But, as an individual/uber-small hoster, those requirements put it outside the range of "host this on an old box."
      That's not to say that Zimbra was targeted at me to start (so, please don't take it as a complaint). I just wanted to break the news (hopefully gently) to those hobbyists that were getting excited about hosting it. 8/
      • Those are for production environments; in other words, a bunch of users.

        Their testing environment specs are much easier to attain (1G ram, 1.5 gHz machine, RAM is cheap enough that even your "old box server" should have a gig.) If you just want to do something like this in a small environment, a reasonably new old box with $100 of memory should do the trick.

      • Re:Anyone here have any experiances with Zimbra? (Score:4, Informative)

        by cooley ( 261024 ) on Monday May 07, 2007 @03:23PM (#19025667) Homepage
        Don't let those specs get you down too much, friend. I'm successfully running Zimbra (Open Source Edition) on a box nowhere near those specs:

        I just recently put together a Zimbra server for my company. We'll move it to a better machine (with a SCSI RAID5 Array) later, but I built it on an old machine just to make sure Zimbra was what we were looking for in a new mail server to replace our Red Hat w/Sendmail box (and boy, is it ever!).

        The machine I'm running it on is an 800MHz Duron with 1.0 GB of RAM and two 40GB IDE drives. It's running an unmodified Ubuntu Dapper Drake "Desktop" install.

        Besides Zimbra, the only services I've added to the box are VNCServer and BIND.

        This server supports mail and calendering for about 15 employees, including a helpdesk used by our outside clients.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by masonjd ( 657070 )
        My initial install had only 256 MB of RAM and it worked just fine. I have since upgraded to 512 MB of RAM and while it is much snappier I could have survived with less.
      • I am running Zimbra on a Xen instance off a Pentium-D with 1GB of Ram (512mb allocated). Works perfect.

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by dagar ( 84678 )
      We got hit with a virus on our Exchange server a little over a year ago. We migrated to Zimbra. We have about 65 users. The conversion went pretty smooth. Administration is very simple. They made an excellent admin gui. It is very easy to do every day tasks with it. The 1 feature that I miss is tasks/todos. This is supposed to come in version 5 due out in October, along with having IM, documents (wiki), and some other features.
      Full system recovery is a little rocky, but is being adressed.
      My favorite

  • Why'd comcast change? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Red Flayer ( 890720 ) on Monday May 07, 2007 @01:27PM (#19023589) Journal
    FTS:

    Add in support for Samba Domain Controllers and Linux Authentication, Offline Access and Evolution Support and we might finally have our long desired Open Source Exchange killer.
    So let me get this straight -- we're finally getting an Open Source Exchange, and now you're hoping we have something that kills it?

    Seriously, though, I'd be interested to see Comcast's reasoning on changing to Zimbra from Exchange -- might make it a lot easier to justify similar changes elsewhere.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by jmyers ( 208878 )
      "Seriously, though, I'd be interested to see Comcast's reasoning on changing to Zimbra from Exchange"

      I very seriously doubt that comcast is switching from exchange. The article does not say. They are probably switching from sendmail + some webmail app to Zimbra.

    • Re: (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      This has to do with the contract that Comcast had with AT&T to handle the customer email system. Comcast decided to take take it in house.

      This is for the customer facing email, which as I recall is pretty standard SMTP stuff, internal systems will still run Exchange.

      As far as "why this package", I couldn't tell you. I wasn't in on those discussions.

      Yes, I work for Comcast.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by rthille ( 8526 )

        Do you know if AT&T was still using InterMail (from Openwave) to service the email? If so, that's interesting to me, since Zimbra was started by ex-openwave people, though no one I met when I worked there.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Lumpy ( 12016 )
      I also want to know why was the reasons. One of comcasts Major stockholders is Microsoft. On top of that they have a HUGE Microsoft love in the company to the point that unless you cant do it with a MSFT product your project will be shot down.

      There must be something huge in this that Exchange can not do or meet.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by 99BottlesOfBeerInMyF ( 813746 )

        There must be something huge in this that Exchange can not do or meet.

        Maybe you're barking up the wrong tree completely. Do you actually think Comcast is using Exchange to supply mail service to all their customers? I'm one of those customers and I know they instructed me to use POP/IMAP for the protocols. I can't even imagine trying to scale an Exchange server up to that number of users. Maybe it is possible, but it seems highly unlikely.

        I strongly suspect Comcast is migrating from Sendmail or some other common e-mail server that is built to scale well. I don't know wher

  • Not completely Open Source (Score:5, Informative)

    by bleh-of-the-huns ( 17740 ) on Monday May 07, 2007 @01:29PM (#19023617)
    Looking at the comparison between the open source version, and the commercial versions, much of the functionality that exchange excells in (namely corperate enterprise messeging), is not available in the OS version. The big glaring ones being outlook support and mobile support (atleast for me anyways). Although it is pretty slick, unless your paying for additional functionality, it is no exchange killer. However, I suspect licensing is significantly cheaper then exchange's licensing.
    • Their pricing: the "network edition" costs 18 bucks per user per year, 25 bucks per user per year if you want Outlook/iSync stuff. One thing that I don't like is that you can only buy them in 25-user packs which blows when you add that 26th employee but whatever.

      The open vesion is fairly feature rich but misses some minor stuff. At my new company we might actually just use the OS one for a while since there's only 5 of us and I can figure out the backup/restore procedures myself (dump the database/ldap a

    • Re:Not completely Open Source (Score:5, Interesting)

      by IGnatius T Foobar ( 4328 ) on Monday May 07, 2007 @02:02PM (#19024255) Homepage Journal
      Most of the open source groupware systems seem to have a non-free "pro" or "enterprise" version. If you're looking for something that's completely open source, you might want to try out Citadel [citadel.org] [http://www.citadel.org]. It is community-developed and doesn't have the multi-tiered approach. Fully turnkey, nothing to integrate manually, and it has a nice ajax-based front end too. An Outlook connector is currently in beta, too.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by FFFish ( 7567 )
        I'm from the Citadel-86 old-school... please explain how Citadel == groupware. I'm sincerely curious how you see it differing from any other messaging system.
      • For those who want to try it without having to, you know, do anything, you can download the appliance [citadel.org]. I'm doing this now, and if I'm still at work when it completes, I'll maybe write something about it. We're currently looking at bringing mail in-house (outsourced now, to some incompetents) and they want Outlook (yuck.)
      • Yesterday I downloaded the Citadel appliance. Today I tried using it. Pointed my web browser at the address it said and got back a blank page (after a long attempt to fetch it.) No content. Only the best!
    • You really don't need (ie, won't use) the Exchange functionality, especailly now that the Desktop sync is available. The Web GUI is faster and no where near the hog that Exchange is.

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by Pav ( 4298 )

      Looking at the comparison between the open source version, and the commercial versions, much of the functionality that exchange excells in (namely corperate enterprise messeging), is not available in the OS version.

      It's worse than that - the Open Source license is "Attribware". Basically any fork must have large obnoxious ads linking back to the Zimbra website. This is a huge disincentive for anyone who wants to fork the project. If a project is stagnating or the company owning a project goes belly up the right to fork without caveats is critical.

      I'm not worried though... There are a lot of promising and less restricted open source projects are in the works (Kolab, OpenGroupWare, Citadel etc...). Most

  • Outlook sync is only available at the highest level of paid service.

  • Choices (Score:5, Informative)

    by packethead ( 322873 ) on Monday May 07, 2007 @01:32PM (#19023701)
    I did an eval on Zimbra vs. Scalix about a year ago. I decided to roll out Scalix, because at that time, Zimbra did not support mailbox delegation, did not have a mature Outlook MAPI connector (or one at all) and required too much DEU retraining. Scalix Web Access looks just like Outlook.

    Now having just said this, Scalix is a pig! It' is unstable, uses A very clunky hack of Tomcat, has no backup or restore functionaility, the Outlook connector is missing key features that Outlook/Exchange users live by, and an incident-based support pricing model that, quite frankly, is a racket. (I know packethead, tell us what you really think).

    I sincerly hope Zimbra has gotten more mature and can actually put a dent in M$'s dominance.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by div_2n ( 525075 )
      Did the issues deal with shared calendaring by any chance? They have allegedly made great strides in that department over the last year.
    • yes the Scalix vs Zimbra question is a tough one. They are both missing important things and I agree with what you say about Scalix. Still, for a small company, especially that doesn't want a web-based client, Zimbra's licensing structure is basically saying they don't want my business. I would like to say that Scalix has so far not lost any data for us, and does work. knock on wood.

      I hope they both continue to improve.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by papason ( 4755 )
      Well I decided to use a different MTA with replacing Exchange, Kerio Mail Server. While no MTA is perfect, this one suits me just fine.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Nutria ( 679911 )
      DEU
      • Data Encryption Unit
      • Deck/Engine Utility
      • Defective End-User
      • Delegated Examining Unit (US Government)
      • Democratic Union (Czech Republic)
      • Digital Electronics Unit
      • Digital Enabled Usages
      • Digital Evaluation Unit
      • Disk Expansion Unit
      • Display Electronic Unit
      • Display Electronics Unit
      • Distinctive Environmental Uniform
      • Dokuz Eylul University
      • Drive Electronics Unit (Heads-up Guidance System)
      • Drug Enforcement Unit
      • Dumb End User
      • Germany (ISO Country code)

      Is Dumb End User what you mean?

  • I would love to give it a shot (Score:3, Interesting)

    by shaitand ( 626655 ) on Monday May 07, 2007 @01:53PM (#19024087) Journal
    The only problem is that Zimbra isn't in the Ubuntu repository. In fact, none of the so called exchange killers that I could find are in the Ubuntu repository.

    • Re:I would love to give it a shot (Score:5, Informative)

      by oldosadmin ( 759103 ) on Monday May 07, 2007 @02:18PM (#19024527) Homepage
      That's because zimbra basically takes over your whole system. Own web+tomcat server. Own MTA. Own LDAP+MySQL. Own Amavis. We basically setup a RHEL box with Zimbra and said "it's an appliance" and let it do the zimbra thing.

      • Re:I would love to give it a shot (Score:4, Insightful)

        by shaitand ( 626655 ) on Monday May 07, 2007 @02:49PM (#19025067) Journal
        That sounds like quite the pain in the ass. Just the same, it should be in the repository and the other pieces can be dependencies. Install Ubuntu server, enable repositories, apt-get update, apt-get install zimbra. At that point all the dependencies work themselves out and a basic functional zimbra with the most commonly needed configuration comes out of the box. After another 10 minutes or less of tweaking you have a zimbra server. AND you can run other services on it if you are putting it in an office with 10-20 users instead of 50,000!

        They could go the easy route and have the package conflict with other MTA's (all that other stuff can just run on alternative ports). I know, I know, sounds like a great idea. Why don't I get right on that? *grumble grumble*

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by mindriot ( 96208 )

        And that is why I was looking at OpenGroupWare [opengroupware.org], which doesn't seem to suffer from this problem and has a (non-free) Outlook connector. I haven't tried it yet, though.

        Does anyone have experience with OGW?

    • Re:I would love to give it a shot (Score:5, Informative)

      by IGnatius T Foobar ( 4328 ) on Monday May 07, 2007 @03:00PM (#19025263) Homepage Journal
      One of the open source Exchange killers is Citadel [citadel.org], which there definitely are .deb's and repositories for. The reason you won't find Zimbra, Scalix, etc. there is because those products are not "true" open source; they're basically just stripped down versions of commercial products. The only reason Zimbra and Scalix are quasi open source in the first place is because they needed access to open source components like Postfix, MySQL, etc. Citadel is true community-developed open source.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by jaseuk ( 217780 )
        If it has no Outlook connector then it isn't an exchange killer.

        Jason

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by trawg ( 308495 )
        The FAQ says 'A "connector" product is currently in beta' - that sort of implies the connector will be a separate standalone, well, product - perhaps commercial? Is that right or will it also be open source?

        I assume from your posts in this thread that it will be open source but just wanted to clarify :)
    • citadel.org has debs already in place. though not yet in the ubuntu universe, but that will happen soon. Its less complicated to install and won't bring you a java memory hog.

  • Try it with VMware... (Score:3, Informative)

    by wandazulu ( 265281 ) on Monday May 07, 2007 @01:54PM (#19024101)
    They provide a pre-built virtual machine [vmware.com] to try out a full installation with no setup.

    I've played with it and it's basically "email server in a box"...just turn it on and point your mail app at it. I can't speak for specific features because it's been awhile now since I last checked it out.

  • Not a comperable move (Score:5, Insightful)

    by AK Marc ( 707885 ) on Monday May 07, 2007 @02:21PM (#19024577)
    So, Comcast is moving customers from something to something else, and that means that one of those somethings compares with Microsoft Exchange. I'd have to presume that Exchange wasn't what Comcast is moving from. ISPs want mail servers. They expect that mail will be relatively independent between users. They presume that administrators want to have nothing to do with emails inside the email boxes. They presume that if a user calls up and says "I deleted an email and I want you to get it back" that a polite "go away" is a sufficient answer.

    None of that has anything to do with what Exchange is aimed for. Exchange is not used for any major ISP that I'm aware of (not even Microsoft's public email services), nor should it be. Exchange is built to integrate with Domain Services. It's made so that you can have resource scheduling integrated with calendars and busy notification. It's made so that a secretary can log into her boss's account and check all his emails and send emails as herself or under his name as if he sent them himself. It's made so that when the idiot sends out the video of the latest commercial he thinks is cute that there is only one copy of the video on the server, and the emails point to it, rather than replicating it 1000 times.

    Exchange is not a mail server. It is a messaging server (with integrated calendar functionality). This submission is written by someone that is either too stupid to know the difference, or who knows that the comparison is stupid and is just trying to drum up support for a product through misrepresentation. Either way, though the product being touted may be interesting, the submission is crap.

    • I'd have to presume that Exchange wasn't what Comcast is moving from.

      This is correct, they were on another large hosted solution.

      None of that has anything to do with what Exchange is aimed for. Exchange is not used for any major ISP that I'm aware of (not even Microsoft's public email services), nor should it be. Exchange is built to integrate with Domain Services. It's made so that you can have resource scheduling integrated with calendars and busy notification. It's made so that a secretary can log int

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dedazo ( 737510 )

      not even Microsoft's public email services

      Every MX machine on every MSFT domain is an Exchange box. Maybe not Hotmail, but everything else is. The fact that it's configured as an SMTP relay doesn't mean it's not running Exchange.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by tenchiken ( 22661 )
      Exchange is not a mail server. It is a messaging server (with integrated calendar functionality).


      And I am just going to have to conclude that you know snot and didn't RTFA, or bother looking at the links in the submission. If you did, you would notice that Zimbra is also a messaging server (with integrated calendaring functionality), that also can manage directory services and is Open Source.

      Either way, the product being touted is interesting, but your comment is crap.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by AK Marc ( 707885 )
        And I am just going to have to conclude that you know snot and didn't RTFA, or bother looking at the links in the submission. If you did, you would notice that Zimbra is also a messaging server (with integrated calendaring functionality), that also can manage directory services and is Open Source.

        I'm going to conclude that you didn't read my comment. If you had, you'd have noticed that I didn't say a damn thing about Zimbra. What it does and does not do is irrelevant to my point. An ISP mail server is
  • ..but it has a few strikes against it, at least for SMBs:
    • The subscription model can make it price-competitive with Exchange, which is a hard sell in some places.
    • The subscription model makes less than palatable for people who like to own their software. People have trouble buying software with a built-in poison pill.
    • The more amusing features aren't part of the OS version (mobile support, Outlook connector, HA/DR)

    Compared to Exchange on a Select agreement, or hosted Exchange, it's not bad at all. For

  • "Open Source Exchange killer"

    More like an open source Groupwise killer. Later on Novell. Wonder if Red Hat is going to be purchasing another company soon ...?

  • Nice Slashvertisement! (Score:2, Informative)

    by DogDude ( 805747 )
    Well, this is certainly a nice Slashvertisement, but I fail to see what Zimbra has to do with Exchange. The both do email, which is nice, but anybody who thinks that people use Exchange exclusively for email has no idea what they're talking about. You might as well say that GNUCash is a Quickbooks killer. But, I do hope that Slashdot was at least paid well for this ridiculous plug.
  • I just started using it for a few clients and I wish I hadn't.

    it's extremely peculiar to install,
    it doesn't reside well with others,
    it crashes and refuses to start for no apparent reason,
    it has way to many log files to be troubleshoot,
    it eats memory for breakfast,
    it doesn't support installs in a custom directory.
    it's their way or the highway.

    Zimbra support is next to useless.

    comcast is a bunch of morons for trying to use this as an enterprise suite.
    it will work well with dedicated servers and dedicated staf
  • Zimbra really seems to want to be the only thing on a machine though. I've reverted to Mail.app and UW-IMAP until I get the gumption to build a machine just for Zimbra.

    I'd agree that it's Enterprise Ready, having seen a couple admin friends roll it out to their enterprise, seems pretty sweet. Their licensing model looks pretty sane too. Full functionality in the OSS version, then pay extra for all the Exchange/Outlook integration features, hopefully that brings in enough cash to keep development going
  • I'm looking at the Admin manual and it seems like the only external authentication scheme supported is Active Directory. Looks like it can use OpenLDAP to store information about users, but the authentication itself is AD only. WTF??

    Can anyone clarify this?

    http://www.zimbra.com/docs/ne/latest/administratio n_guide/5_Zimbra_LDAP.5.1.html#1036410 [zimbra.com]

    -matthew
    • No, you can use regular LDAP for authentication, or you can integrate any other system in via preauth keys.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by misleb ( 129952 )
        What would an example of "any other system" be and what are "preauth keys?"

        -matthew
        • Preauth keys allow any web based service to redirect with authentication into the Zimbra server. You can use any LDAP server that implements the standard classes for authentication as well.

          Go to www.zimbra.com/forums and use the search function.

  • Yawn (Score:2)

    by bogie ( 31020 )
    I've been hearing this for a decade now. Frankly I'm much more impressed with kerio Mail Server.
  • We had an exchange killer at one point, Hula.. but Novell didn't release enough of the code and eventually stoped suporting the project.

    From what I know its still opensource and could be taken up by people but there just dosnt seem to be intrest in it.

Slashdot Top Deals

It is easier to write an incorrect program than understand a correct one.

Close