[Dovecot] [OT] MS Exchange Alternative?

[Charles Marcus]

On 2012-12-04 9:20 AM, Jakob Curdes <jc at info-systems.de> wrote:
> Am 04.12.2012 15:15, schrieb Marc Perkel:
>> Just wondering if there's an open source Linux alternative to MS 
>> Exchange so that all the features of outlook work?
> Did you have a look at zarafa? Most part of it is open source; the 
> outlook connector ist closed source however and requires a license fee 
> for more than three clients.
> It uses MAPI to connect to Outlook, unlike many other solutions that 
> do calendar syncs etc. via the ActiveSync protocol. Zarafa is a 
> completely different thing than dovecot, however; it stores all mails 
> in a MySQL database.

So does SOGo, no plugin required for Outlook. There is an extension for 
Thunderbird+Lightning, and it also supports most every mobile client out 
there.... and it uses Dovecot for the IMAP server *now*, and also 
includes OpenChange and Samba4. It is also supposed to be *very* 
lightweight, and can integrate with most any other backend you may be 
using. We currently use PostfixAdmin for managing email users, and we'll 
be able to happily keep using it for as long as we want after the migration.

We will be migrating to SOGo (using Thunderbird+Lightning+Google 
Calendar now) very soon, and we are fully expecting to leverage the fact 
that SOGo includes Samba4 in the future, so that when the time comes for 
another Microsoft Server Upgrade, we will instead 'upgrade' to Samba4, 
and demote our older 2008R2 servers to member servers - if we keep them 
around at all.

-- 

Best regards,

Charles