[mdlug] Something to exchange Exchange

[Michael S. Mikowski]

Hi Rob:

I have researched Scalix for my company, spoke with their 
reps, and recommended them to my brother who is using 
them to support thousands of users.  Sometimes, the 
people were hard to get a hold of, but other than that, 
my experience has been mostly positive.

Infoworld gave them a glowing review (with Zimbra coming 
in a close second).  Technologically, their product is 
quite compelling.  I and about 4 other users played with 
calendaring and email.  Everything worked like it should.  
Installation was painless on RHES4.  

The web client was a little bit slow to start (5-10s), but 
also very responsive and compelling once loaded.  On a 
local network, its easy to forget you are not using 
outlook.  And they support Outlook clients too.  Its as 
close to a drop-in Exchange replacement as you can hope 
to get.

However, if you are attempting to influence your company 
to move from Exchange -- and you are not the IT guy -- 
recognize that the major impediments are probably not 
technological, but instead are political.

Our company's infrastructure and personell are so firmly 
wedged into Exchange, they aren't going anywhere.  I 
scared a /lot/ of people by just install the damn thing 
on the box under my desk.  The CTO only grudgingly agreed 
to allow me to test (Exchange was choking on our mail 
volume at the time), and then decisions makers refused to 
even /look/ at the the thing.  AFAIK, they never even 
considered anything but Exchange.

Since then, they threw a lot of money, hardware, time, MS 
licenses at the problem, and the email works much better 
now.  It just goes to show -- a /lot/ of people bet their 
career on installing and managing Exchange (see Ford 
Motor Company c1999)

So be forwarned.  If I were to do it all over again, I'd 
spend a lot more time on people-strategy.  Good luck!  
And, you may want to look at Zimbra too.

Cheers, Mike

On Monday 29 January 2007, Robert Adkins wrote:
> I am reading through the February Linux Journal
> magazine and came across a snippet about Scalix.
>
> www.scalix.com
>
> Has anyone ever messed around with it? If so, what your
> experiences with it?
>
> (I doubt I'll install it here, there's little to no
> interest in collaborating or even scheduling meetings
> with something like Scalix.)
>
> -Rob
> _______________________________________________
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> mdlug at mdlug.org
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-- 
Mike
www.dynaorg.com