> Hi,
>
> I have been out voted into having our company switch to using Outlook at
> the desktop and a Microsoft Exchange server. (Oh the nightmares)  We had
> a conversation about this the other day after this was decided and the
> person who made the final decision thought that we NEEDED exchange to
> run Outlook.  After explaining to him that you don't need Exchange to
> run MS Office w/ Outlook, he mentioned that he wants to switch from the
> web based phpgroupware to using the shared contacts within outlook. This
> is where my problems come in at.  I need something that runs on Linux
> that will emulate exchange.  I have come across exchange4linux along
> with some pure client side contact sharing solutions.  After going
> through the installation proceedure for exchange4linux, I found out that
> after I loaded the client MAPI plugin for Outlook, that it required a
> key on the server to allow clients to connect (thus costing money per
> seat).  I then looked into using public and shared folders in IMAP - we
> run UW-IMAP.  I created the necessary environment for a public folder
> and got it to work nicely with #public showing in the namespace list.  I
> can't get Outlook or Squirrelmail to subscribe to it, and outlook
> probably wouldn't allow the creation of contacts in this folder.  So
> that solution isn't going to work either.  Any other ideas?

Contacts and shared mail should not be an issue.  Generally it's
calendaring that is hard to provide a solution to.  I suggest using
cyrus-imap for mail and LDAP for your shared contacts.  I have not found a
good calendaring solution as of yet.  It would be interesting to know
their full thinking on this matter.

-Derek