OT:Exchange good? - And the flame wars begin (Was:Re:newhotness?)

[Craig White]

On Fri, 2009-02-20 at 15:47 -0700, Bryan O'Neal wrote:
> $1500 is the cost of the box, the server os, the exchange server, the AD,
> and set up.  The client licenses (aka outlook) run about $40 per user.
> Since set up can be done off the AD controller (including client program
> installation) there is almost no cost associated with it. I have not found a
> way to manage a similar mail application for less in a medium size
> environment.  Remember you have to pay every tech their hourly wage and/or
> loose the productivity of the worker if they are setting up their own
> clients so it is far from free.  The total cost of ownership for things like
> SAMBA are very low, but for products like Asterisk they can be quite high.
> In addition products like qmail are not collaboration suites.  I can not
> search the calendars of 20 people and 3 resources to find compactable
> meeting times and assign group tasks to sub groups of people to be worked
> on, tracked and returned by said meeting then we are not talking about a
> comparable product.  Products like FirstClass have functions like this, but
> are typically more expensive to implement then Exchange (though I am also
> told it is nicer, never used it my self though)
----
I suppose you can justify whatever you believe to be costs as you see
fit. The SBS version is by intent a hampered product to encourage
adoption - sort of like the drug dealer giving the drugs away until you
get hooked.
----
> As for the list of features, the mail portion can be replaced by just about
> anything.  Exchange mail is nothing special when it comes to mail, we are
> talking about a collaboration suite and PIM. Meldware Communication Suite
> looks like it may be close, if it added more group functions, tasks, and
> document management associated with cross linked calendar and task items it
> would be very close.
----
As the various standards have firmed up - especially CalDAV, there is an
explosion of options but if you want to only consider off the shelf
proprietary options, the list is smaller.
----
> As for the flame comment...  I felt famed by Craig, and I have not had the
> chance to get in a good argument as of late so I will back off the adamant
> position ;)  Especially since the last three companies I consulted for asked
> about exchange and I persuaded them it was not the rite solution for them.
> Don't get me wrong, I would have been happy to take their money and set it
> up, but their were better cost/benefit solutions for them.
----
I suppose that it may not be possible to disagree with you and your love
for Exchange Server without you feeling flamed. I sought to make 2
points...the first being that the price you talk about is never quite
the price because of the extras that you have to start buying to
integrate things like backup and the second being, if you want to get
beyond vendor lock-in, it's a really poor choice.
----
> On that note has any one actually worked with Zimbra?  I hear their
> "professional" edition is very nice but their open source version is still
> lacking..  Thoughts?
----
I haven't used it. Intent is to be a turnkey type product for admin
lite. I think for the most part, all software is lacking and thus would
expect that any version of Zimbra would fit that description.

It's really hard to get past the point Microsoft Exchange Server and
Microsoft Outlook software runs counter to everything that Linux
represents in the market place.

- Proprietary software
- Vendor lock-in
- Unique protocols
- Proprietary add-ons
- Crippleware

Either these things matter to you or they don't.

Craig