C.2. Opportunities for IT Use of Open Source Email Products Given the history of email adoption in enterprises, most IT departments in midsize to large companies are running Microsoft Exchange on the server and Microsoft Outlook on the desktop. Remote users or users checking email from home are using Outlook Web Access or Outlook Express. We can subdivide each of these into three scenarios: You are using almost all the capabilities of Exchange, and while this is fine in terms of basic email and collaboration, you are overwhelmed by virus outbreaks via email attachments or are drowning in spam. The primary challenges in this scenario are managing increasingly frequent virus outbreaks and managing the nightmare of spam. Integrating open source content scanners into this environment can provide immediate relief on both fronts. A few specific examples are: Creating a secure mail gateway, or a mail firewall, that will shield Microsoft Exchange or Lotus Notes from direct contact. This mail gateway can perform content filtering, including removing viruses and Microsoft Outlook exploits, and identify spam. This can be implemented using Postfix, SpamAssassin, or Anomy Sanitizer. This allows enterprises to implement short-term relief from viruses and spam, and immediately cuts the number of person hours that IT staff and end users spend dealing with the problem. The SpamBayes Outlook plug-in can be deployed to users' desktop machines as a second-layer protection against spam. This can help catch any spam that server-based solutions are not catching. For smaller organizations, this might be the only solution needed for spam control, as it allows email administrators to plan the implementation of a server-side solution instead of dealing with it as an emergency.
You are using only the basic email capabilities of Exchange and feel it is not worth the cost. So, you are exploring a low-cost alternative. Here are your options: If your enterprise needs a shared address book and shared folders in addition to email, a combination of open source projects (OpenLDAP for a shared address book, Courier-IMAP for a mail delivery agent, and Postfix for a mail transfer agent) can save you from needing a Microsoft Exchange license. Users with Outlook Express can be moved over to Mozilla Thunderbird to provide equivalent functionality and significantly reduced exposure to viruses and spam.
You want a drop-in replacement for Exchange, and you want to continue to keep your end users on Outlook. In this scenario your out-of-the-box options are limited to a few products, such as Novell Open Exchange, but they are not open source. These products are significantly less expensive than Microsoft Exchange is, and they might be worth analyzing. Also, a do-it-yourself option of combining a solution out of various open source projects is available. Read the rest of this appendix for ideas.
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