Open-Xchange

[HodgeHi]

Has anybody implemented it in a school environment?

As a school we are looking towards open source and free software since budgets are shrinking and licensing costs are growing.

Please post any good points / bad points about open-Xchange.

Most obvious good point is its free.

What reasons are there for implementing it over MS exchange?

[plexer]

The basic version is free but the connectors to allow you to use outlook or palm devices with it are an extra cost.

You can't sync directly with it from a windows mobile device.

The cost of an exchange licence to an educational establishment is peanuts anyway.

I actually got mine free with 50 user cals when I bought some other software from Ramesys.

Ben

[Geoff]

Also consider Zimbra

http://www.zimbra.com/

Scalix

http://www.scalix.com/

and the Horde framework.

http://www.horde.org/

Only stumbling blocks with any of these are if you want Outlook connectivity. That either is non-existant or costs money (due to the MS license fee). Also compatability with IE6 is sometimes flakey with AJAX components. Use firefox/mozilla seamonkey if possible.

[pete]

Linux Format reviewed it recently (latest issue?).

[DMcCoy]

Horde is good, I use it at home, but it is quite difficult to setup and configure. I have used exchange and mdaemon as backend servers and have integrated authentication with ldap on windows AD.

[webman]

Yep, there's roughly a 5 page guide in LXF81 about it.

[CyberNerd]

same issue has a 10page article on OSS in schools.
I did look into OpenXchange, but zimbra seems to fit in better with our existing setup.
We Plan on moving a yeargroup of stiudents to zimbra for full scale testing and (hopefully) rip out that exchange by end of next year.
It was the simple AD integration I liked about Zimbra - OpenXchange looked much more difficult.

[DMcCoy]

The thing is, exchange isn't all that expensive for schools anyway. Not that I'm that fond of it but mostly it works.

[CyberNerd]

What reasons are there for implementing it over MS exchange?

Groupware and Diversity. Exchange is pretty good in an MS only environment with everyone using outlook - but Microsofts implementation of IMAP sucks, If you want to be a able to offer more choice and have more features at a lower price then probably you want to move away from exchange. Just add up all the costs of things like virus scanning, spam filters, cals, clients, support for outlook, content filtering etc and an open web based solution (that works with firefox/opea) is a strong contender.

I started a discussion about the benefits of zimbra over exchange a few weeks back.
Sadly, my boss didn't go for a wholesale move to zimbra - but we get to do a pilot first.
http://www.edugeek.net/index.php?nam...ghlight=zimbra

[Geoff]

Exchange also locks you in. You can't realistically get your data out if you want to migrate to something else later on.