Microsoft Outlook.
Oh what joy this bloated app has brought to me and my IT brethren.
It almost single handedly keeps us employed. Keeping a PC on the desk of employees the world over. Dare say, outlook is THE killer app for most companies on the planet.
For the uninitiated, Outlook is a mash up of Calendar, Tasks, Notes and Email functions. One application that combines all these into a critical point of reference for Joe Schmoe employee.
Outlook and it's back end sibling, Exchange, all but dominate the corporate scene.
My personal quest for many years has been finding a way to break this strangle hold. Do not get me wrong. Outlook is fantastic and I love it. The problem comes with Exchange. This server app is huge and expensive. Not only that, it requires Windows Server. Another expense.
Big companies will easily laugh off the US$3000 or so that a simple Exchange setup may cost them but small companies will cringe.
Hence the need to find an alternative. (As I run and deal with many small companies)
Enter Linux and OSS. (Open Source Software, namely Scalix and Zimbra)
Can't beat them for price: Free.
What's more, now you can't beat them for functionality.
Linux and OSS had long promised to stomp the Exchange/Outlook combo but many of their solutions that I evaluated over the years came up short. Not anymore.
Scalix and Zimbra are now enterprise ready apps that can tackle the tasks Outlook and Exchange handled, with aplomb.
The process was relatively painless.
Step 1) Get Fedora Core 5 (made a trip by my padner dry and snagged the 5 ISO install)
Step 2) Install Fedora Core 5 on a PC. (Anything around 1ghz cpu, 1gig ram, 20gb HD should do the trick)
Step 3) Install and configure Scalix or Zimbra.
Voila.
There you have it. Entire process should take about two hours and you'll be rewarded with a corporate strenth email and collaboration solution.
Sounds too good to be true doesn't it? Well stop rubbing your eyes. This stuff is for real.
What's more, it does not take a unix expert to pull it off. I'm a relative noob at this and got both apps up and running without much fuss.
There is one caveat (isn't there always??)
You practically do away with outlook. Both apps offer a webclient that rivals outlook in look and functionality.
Sounds good you might say initially. No Outlook to install, less money to spend, less issues to support, etc...
While all that is true...without Outlook your users are dependant on the server for all their needs. If it goes down, there is nothing to fall back on. No cached data, nada. That also means problems for laptop users that would traditionall download their mail/schedule unto their PC and run off.
They do offer solutions for this. Scalix has a free outlook connector. This little app would allow your regular Outlook client to connect to the Scalix server. Unfortunately it did not work for me. Instead it just ate 100% of my cpu cycles. Some work still required obviously.
Zimbra was not so kind. You have to pay for a commercial version to get their Outlook connector functionality. As a result, I could not test that aspect of the product.
Those niggling negatives aside, these are two awesome options for small companies needing collaboration on a budget.
Zimbra get's my vote as it was easier to install and it more readily integrates with an existing POP mail setup. Typical at small offices.
Feel free to read the hype at their respective websites:
http://www.scalix.com/http://www.zimbra.com/
