A Web Based Solution to Replace Exchange? 75
benthemeek asks: "A friend of mine works for a company that has more than 6k users connecting to a Outlook exchange server instance through VPN from various homes all across the country. The executives at his company would like to move to Active Directory and a web based solution for these users. When Outlook Web Access was priced out, it was judged very expensive and they opened the floor to other options. They want a LDAP enabled, web based email and calendar that could hopefully plug in or replace Exchange, and if the solution can be load balanced between more than one server to ensure reliability and uptime, that would be even better. Slashdot readers come from many walks of life and I am sure some of you have gone through a similar experience and could give some insight to this problem. The fan boy in me would like to see a complete Open Source to meet this need, but that may not be possible. Have any of you done similar migrations, and to what solution did you go to?"
Ummm... Easy... (Score:5, Informative)
ExchangeIt (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.nitix.com/products/os/exchangeit.php [nitix.com]
Linux-based MS Exchange replacement. Due to the whole autonomic computing paradigm, it is much easier to set up than any competitors.
The downside is that it comes with its own OS, which could be an obstacle to some people. From my experience, though, companies don't care about the OS, they are just as happy to throw an entire box at the problem.
Horde (Score:4, Informative)
Zimbra? (Score:5, Informative)
If you stick with Exchange on the backend and just want to replace Outlook then Evolution [gnome.org] is probably your best (if not only) choice as it implements most of Outlook's functionality. It also support other mail client standards like IMAP and POP3 of course, so will seamlessly integrate with any almost other backend mail server too. Packages for UNIX are readily available and the Windows port is also stable, and although there isn't a pre-rolled installation package just yet, that can't be too far off.
More expensive, but more functional (Score:4, Informative)
The basic idea is you build a Windows terminal server (more likely several - fault tolerance and all that), install Outlook on it, and use Citrix's web interface to provide a launch point. Outlook runs on the server, and any user with an ICA client (Citrix's client) can run it - even your Mac, *nix, and (gasp) DOS users.
That takes care of users inside the firewall. Outside, you have to have a VPN solution. Or, you can use the Citrix Access Gateway to provide access. By itself, it acts just like an SSL VPN, only cheaper (the box is $2500 and concurrent user licenses are $200 or so at retail). When used in conjunction with something called Advanced Access Control (AAC), you can provide secure access to any Citrix-delivered or web-delivered applications WITHOUT a VPN client. AAC turns the CAG into an HTTP/HTTPS/ICA proxy. It features RSA integration and all that jazz. As a side-bonus, AAC + CAG support smartphones, PDA's, and Crackberry's (though that last has an ugly UI).
Not the cheapest solution and it is certainly not as easy as I describe, but it is definitely capable of doing what you need - without having to retrain your users on a mail application. It is easier to say "go to this URL, log in, and click the Outlook icon" than it is to say, "here's PINE - Hope you remember how to use telnet"
To provide robust access anytime, anywhere
OpenGroupware.org (Score:2, Informative)
Infoworld review of Scalix and Zimbra (Score:1, Informative)
Good comparison between the two leading options. We're thinking about this ourselves for our small business.
Novell NetMail (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.novell.com/products/netmail/ [novell.com]
Have fun!
-m
Horde 3.0 (Score:4, Informative)
Horde went through a major rewrite/restructuring for the 3.0 effort. Horde 3.0 is definitely a web-based Exchange-killer (and Sharepoint-killer).
If you use Cyrus IMAPd as your IMAP backend, you even get shared mailboxes. Horde's other modules also have excellent sharing support. Shared calendars, mailboxes, todo lists, addressbooks, etc. Turba, the addressbook module, supports LDAP directories. Horde's other modules also have support to grab bits of info from LDAP.
I highly recommend Horde. I used to use it a lot more than I do know. When that was the case, I was also a regularly submitter of patches to the project (I helped mostly the last year 3.0 was still unreleased).
While Hula [hula-project.org] may look prettier, I find Horde to be much more functional.
Of course, there are plenty of things to be done... So, start using it and start submitting patches!
Re:Novell NetMail (Score:4, Informative)
The web interface is one of the key improvements over NetMail.
Re:Ummm... Easy... but costly (Score:5, Informative)
I'm no IT expert so maybe it's just me, but I'm thinking that perhaps since it has the same features, a small business would want the small business edition for $2900 per year for 100 users, for a total 3 year cost of $8700 with upgrades and OS licenses included.
However, since we are talking about a business with 6000 users, let's look at that cost:
See, you can twist the numbers either way. I'll leave it to the mods to decide who was more realistic. Microsoft may have some volume licensing that I'm not aware of, but why should I track down the exact price when you wouldn't?
Of course, if I was the CFO, I would go with secret option number 3: spend $150,000 to hire a full-time developer for a year to make an ultra-customized version of the zimbra open source edition that will meet my company's exact needs.
Kerio works for me. (Score:1, Informative)