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[Phil B]

Hello. For those of you more inclined to the IT side of the tree:

I need to upgrade our email server software at my SME. I inherited a solution called VPOP3 from Paul Smith Computer Services. I have to be honest, it works real well, The anti Spam measures are very sweet, it archives nicely, and everything is manageable from a web interface.
The downsides are it's slow, it's slow, and when it crashes the logs are next to useless.

I've been looking at getting Exchange in, I used it at my last job and to be fair it's pretty good. However it's pretty pricey too. So as a project I've been researching open source alternatives. So far the only one I've come across worth my lunchtime pint is a server called Zimbra from Yahoo. It looks the bis, albeit it only runs on Linux etc. But it does do shared calendars, address books, IM and such like, a proper collaberation tool.

I've got it running on a test server and so far it seems great, providing some software tool that promises more visual admin works out OK, I'd be happy to implement it.

I'm just wondering what anyone else out there runs and what they think of it?

Cheers
Phil

[TheBoy]

To be honest, if your prefered mail and collaboratin client is outlook, you will struggle to beat MS sExchange. Cost is an issue, but if you're small, look at the Small Buisiness Edition of Windows Server. IN the case of Exchange 2007, you need 64bit, and a shit load of RAM, and its very different to previous versions.

Most of the open source and freeware versions seem to be based around POP3/IMAP (not ideal for outlook, but does work), but seem to lack any additional collaboration.

Might be worth looking at a series of products to do what you need - a seperate mailbox product with or without a relay, a seperate IM tool, seperate calendar tool, and so on.  Or look at using online tools, such as gmail and the like.

[Martin_1962]

We use Tobit Infocentre, but since the Wrexham office has shut the support has been, to be frank, shit!

[VXL V6]

To be honest, if your prefered mail and collaboratin client is outlook, you will struggle to beat MS sExchange. Cost is an issue, but if you're small, look at the Small Buisiness Edition of Windows Server. IN the case of Exchange 2007, you need 64bit, and a shit load of RAM, and its very different to previous versions.

Most of the open source and freeware versions seem to be based around POP3/IMAP (not ideal for outlook, but does work), but seem to lack any additional collaboration.

Might be worth looking at a series of products to do what you need - a seperate mailbox product with or without a relay, a seperate IM tool, seperate calendar tool, and so on.  Or look at using online tools, such as gmail and the like.

If you use SBE for god sake make sure it's patched up to date, it has some (may have been fixed in the latest releases) rather major bugs that were fixed via updates.

[TheBoy]

To be honest, if your prefered mail and collaboratin client is outlook, you will struggle to beat MS sExchange. Cost is an issue, but if you're small, look at the Small Buisiness Edition of Windows Server. IN the case of Exchange 2007, you need 64bit, and a shit load of RAM, and its very different to previous versions.

Most of the open source and freeware versions seem to be based around POP3/IMAP (not ideal for outlook, but does work), but seem to lack any additional collaboration.

Might be worth looking at a series of products to do what you need - a seperate mailbox product with or without a relay, a seperate IM tool, seperate calendar tool, and so on.  Or look at using online tools, such as gmail and the like.

If you use SBE for god sake make sure it's patched up to date, it has some (may have been fixed in the latest releases) rather major bugs that were fixed via updates.

LOL, same with the core products.  Worth going for the Server 2008 versions, as this will include Exchange 2007 (cut down in SBE) which is inheriently more secure than earlier versions - but obviously must still be patched!


In any case, any server exposed to internet, no matter what the OS, or the service it provides, must remain 100% fully patched...