Alternatives to Microsoft Exchange Server
| One of the last areas in which a Microsoft product has yet to be usurped by open-source software is a replacement for Microsoft Exchange Server. Many businesses use Microsoft Outlook and Microsoft Exchange Server to access email, as well as to provide calendaring, notes, file sharing, and other collaborative functions. General industry complaints about Exchange Server center around scalability, administration (backup and restore in particular), and licensing fees. A "drop-in" alternative needs to have compatibility with Microsoft Outlook because it's intended to replace Exchange Server in an environment in which there are Microsoft desktops in existence using Outlook. A "work-alike" alternative provides similar features to Exchange Server, but does not offer compatibility with the Microsoft Outlook client itself; the latter is typical of many of the open-source alternatives. Several "drop-in" alternatives exist, none of which are fully open source because some type of proprietary connector is needed to provide the services to Microsoft Outlook clients (or provide Exchange services to the Linux Evolution client). For Outlook compatibility, the key seems to be the realization of a full, open implementation of MAPI, the Microsoft Messaging Application Program Interface. That goal is going to be difficult to achieve because MAPI is a poorly documented Microsoft protocol. For Linux-only solutions, the missing ingredient for many alternatives is a usable group calendaring/scheduling system similar in function to that provided by Exchange Server/Outlook. Of course, independent applications for these functions abound in the open-source world, but one characteristic of "groupware" is its central administration; another is that all components can share information. The following sections examine several of the available servers, beginning with Microsoft Exchange Server itself and moving toward those applications that have increasing incompatibility with it. None of these servers are provided with Ubuntu. Microsoft Exchange Server/Outlook ClientExchange Server and Outlook seem to be the industry benchmark because of their widespread deployment. They offer a proprietary server providing email, contacts, scheduling, public folders, task lists, journaling, and notes using Microsoft Outlook as the client and MAPI as the API. If you consider what Microsoft Exchange offers as the "full" set of features, no other replacement offers 100% of the features exactly as provided by Microsoft Exchange Servereven those considered "drop-in" replacements. The home page for the Microsoft Exchange server is http://www.microsoft.com/exchange/. CommuniGate ProCommuniGate Pro is a proprietary, drop-in alternative to Microsoft Exchange Server, providing, email, webmail, LDAP directories, a web server, file server, contacts, calendaring (third party), and a list server. The CommuniGate Pro MAPI Connector provides access to the server from Microsoft Outlook and other MAPI-enabled clients. The home page for this server is http://www.stalker.com/. Oracle Collaboration SuiteThis is probably the closest that you will get to an Exchange replacement, allowing you to collaborate by instant messaging, email, sharing files (workspaces), calendaring, and other tools. It provides an Outlook Connector for users who have to have the familiarity of Outlook. OCS is available for Linux platforms and its homepage is http://www.oracle.com/collabsuite/. BynariBynari provides a proprietary group of servers to act as a drop-in replacement for Microsoft Exchange Server for email, calendaring, public folders, scheduling, address book, webmail, and contacts. Although it runs on Linux, it offers no Linux clients, and the connector provides services to Microsoft Outlook only. The home page is http://www.bynari.net/. Open-XchangeOpen-Xchange has a great pedigree having been owned and developed by Novell/SUSE until being spun off by itself into its own company. Working with open standards, it provides a number of collaboration options and is firmly based on Linux. It can work with a wide variety of protocols, making it one of the best connected suites available. You can get the open source version at http://www.open-xchange.org. phpgroupwarephpgroupware is an open-source application written in PHP (and used with MySQL or postgresql plus a web server and an IMAP mail server). phpgroupware provides a web-based calendar, task list, address book, email, news headlines, and a file manager. Its modular nature enables you to plug in various components (around 50 at the last count) as you need them. The home page is http://www.phpgroupware.org/. PHProjektPHProjekt is open-source software written in PHP (used with MySQL, postgresql, Oracle, Informix, or MS-sql). PHProjekt provides calendaring, contact manager, time card system, project management, online chat, threaded discussion forum, trouble ticket system, email, public files, notes bookmarks, voting system, task lists, reminders, site search, and integration with the PostNuke news site application. It provides no Exchange/Outlook compatibility whatsoever. The home page is http://www.PHProjekt.com/. HordeHorde is a PHP-based application framework. When combined with an HTTP server (Apache, Microsoft IIS, Netscape) and MySQL database, IMP/Horde offers modules that provide webmail, contact manager, calendar, CVS viewer, file manager, time tracking, email filter rules manager, notes, tasks, chat, newsgroups, forms, bug tracking, FAQ repository, and presentations. The home page is http://www.horde.org/.
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