Final Thoughts

Linux does mail, and Exchange does mail. Many organizations are going to want to choose something that enables rich collaboration. Today, the big winner here is Exchange. Soon, however, up and comers in the Linux world will be OpenXChange (at http://www.openxchange.org/ ) and Hula (at http://hula-project.org/ ). We checked these two packages out, but in our estimation they just weren't ready for prime time coverage yet.

There are a percentage of people who are looking to expunge Exchange in lieu of some Linux- based alternatives. The credible alternatives at this time are not free packages, however. A good article that details the Linux alternatives can be found at http://www.networkworld.com/news/2005/040405-linux-email.html

Regardless, for today, most people are trying to contend with existing Linux e-mail and integrating it with the corporate Exchange environment. In this chapter, we've provided a unified way of bridging the gap between the two.

With one new server, we've been able to route mail between Linux and Exchange mail servers, create a front-end MTA to route incoming mail from the Internet to the correct mail server, discard messages for invalid recipients, filter spam, and quash viruses.

All this before Exchange or the Linux back end has to lift a finger!

Pretty good for free software, no?