Exchange or Zimbra - What do you use?

[jack0w]

What are people using these days? Exchange or Zimbra? I would be interested to hear any comments people have as we're currently looking to make a decision on whether to go for Exchange 2007 / 2010 or move away to Zimbra.

[EduTech]

We are currently using exchange 2007 and moving to exchange 2010 when it is released. Zimbra is good though and if you sttuggle with funding then i would consider it if you have the money to spend the get exchange

 

I like Exchange

 

----- I do have Zimbra for my Personal Email -------

[mb2k01]

...moving to exchange 2010 when it is released...

 

Released a couple of months ago? (Certainly for volume license customers anyway)

[CyberNerd]

We have staff on Exchange and students on Zimbra.

Zimbra gives less problems (than 2003 exchange) and seems to be more flexible with content filtering, spam and virus detection built in (maybe newer exchanges do this as well). At the time we put Zimbra in it offered much more than exchange - moodle integration, better functionality with zimlets etc

 

But We are ditching both in favour of GoogleMail - it seems to offer more than both, plus I don't have to look after it.

[EduTech]

Released a couple of months ago? (Certainly for volume license customers anyway)

 

yeah we dont have that.. for a couple of months

 

I do use it in a test environment and it works very well!

[bossman]

@all:

 

Great big thumbs up for Zimbra been using since April 2008 and it does what it says on the tin.

[jack0w]

We are currently using exchange 2007 and moving to exchange 2010 when it is released. Zimbra is good though and if you sttuggle with funding then i would consider it if you have the money to spend the get exchange

 

I like Exchange

 

----- I do have Zimbra for my Personal Email -------

 

Interesting that you would go with Exchange if funding is available, why is that? Is Zimbra lacking in some features? or are you talking from an administrators point of view?

[EduTech]

Interesting that you would go with Exchange if funding is available, why is that? Is Zimbra lacking in some features? or are you talking from an administrators point of view?

 

Well i suppose i am wrong in what i am saying there, and hold my hands up. Zimbra is fine for schools, i have used it in the past and have no problems with it. I do know from an administrators point of view they may find exchange easier.. but then again if you know a bit about Linux the administration of Zimbra would be fine.

 

Maybe i'll just shut up

[kesomir]

We use the open source (free) edition of zimbra here.

 

Very happy with it - not had any issues.

[bossman]

Maybe i'll just shut up

 

Good idea bud

[webman]

Just to carry on from what Bossman said... we use open source Zimbra here

 

For the extra added touch, all users are given a shortcut to a localised Mozilla Prism (cut-down browser) pointed to the Zimbra web client. Mozilla is better than Internet Explorer at handling the heavy Javascript. Also, a custom C# program handles integrated Windows authentication, and also allows staff to enable/disable email access for the room.

[Domino]

I've not used zimbra, so I'm not gonna comment, although I've heard very good things.

 

However been using various exchange versions for a while now, and it tends to be one of the few Microsoft products that's well thought out and stable.

 

We'll be rolling out a clustered, multi-tiered 2010 environment soon. very scary, but should be almost totally resilient against outages, clustered mailbox, client access and hub transport servers across three global sites - as well as the new forefront threat management gateway. Doing away with storage groups should make the clustering much faster than 2k7

 

We certainly couldn't ditch it now as we're using Unified Messaging and Office Communicator - and they all tie in very nicely :-)

[jack0w]

Also, a custom C# program handles integrated Windows authentication, and also allows staff to enable/disable email access for the room.

 

Like the sound of that! Is it something you'd be prepared to share?

[webman]

Like the sound of that! Is it something you'd be prepared to share?

 

It's something I'm working on, I just need the time to document it fully ( in between writing Classroombookings v2 ) The Zimbra pre-authentication key is hard-coded in the executable for security purposes, so it would need to be re-compiled with your own included. Other paths etc are stored in an INI file though.

[EduTech]

Good idea bud

 

 

I'll just then and leave you too it *sulk*

[cookie_monster]

Is anyone using Live@Edu? Apparently you can tie it into Active Directory now.

 

http://www.microsoft.com/liveatedu/free-hosted-student-email.aspx

[Sylv3r]

We use Zimbra for our students and a product called FirstClass from OpenText for our staff. Both highly recommended.

[john]

Using, well will be in a couple of weeks time, Exchange 2010 as we have finally had it with the LEA provided system. Hoorah!

[MicrodigitUK]

We currently Use FrogMail as it came part of our Frog VLE but it really is like some old mail system from the late 90’s. For that reason we are moving to Zimbra.

 

Iv been looking at both Exchange, Zimbra and we have decided to go for Zimbra.

 

 

A couple of the main reasons we have chosen Zimbra are:

 

Single sign on from VLE (just finishing off my signal sign on Frog Brick now)

 

Ability to share calendars without administration involvement (Exchange requires an admin to change permissions vs Zimbra publishes a web link that can be put on VLE by users NOT ADMINS)

 

Use our existing Postfix student bad word filter on Zimbra.

 

And I really like what webman stated about it allows staff to enable/disable email access for the room

[Kitkatninja]

We currently use Exchange 2003, started the move to Exchange 2010 last week and hopefully will finish and have it up and running next week

 

-Ken

[rh91uk]

We use Exchange 2007 for both Staff and Students here.

 

Used to use Exchange 2003 and Easymail before the summer, Exchange for staff -> students easymail. Got them running side by side with no one outside the organisation being none the wiser ... was a pita!

[FN-GM]

We use Exchange 2007 here. Its good and does what we wants. It really inst that expensive for it either. The thing with exchange is that is that when it has problem it doesn't tend to be straight forward.

 

I haven't used Zimbra at all.