Outlook - Why Microsoft Still Has Corporate Email
If it weren’t for Outlook’s inability to support other messaging and calendaring systems with FOSS, MS-Exchange wouldn’t be nearly as popular. Enterprise Calendaring, where each user can see availability for other users, is the holy grail.
July 2011 Update – Things have changed. We don’t need to pay Microsoft (or anyone else) anymore. Read more at the bottom of this article.
MS-Exchange – Calendaring
End users don’t like change. I know this first hand. In my company, I refused to install an MS-Exchange server or MS-SBS. That was unpopular with the users, since MS-Outlook and MS-Exchange just work together. They work together very well, actually, and we all know it. Until you have 50+ users and the license costs explode that is, then it is a huge profit center for Microsoft. That’s the main reason I refused to get hooked on MS-Exchange, future license and migration costs.
Outlook – Calendaring
Outlook doesn’t support calendaring systems from competing solutions very well – or not at all. So, for any calendar server to work with Outlook, it will need to implement the MS-MAPI interface used by MS-Exchange. Lot of companies do that, but ZERO of them do it for free. It feels like a conspiracy to me.
Zimbra Message and Calendaring Server
Zimbra implements a complete functional replacement for what MS-Exchange provides on the server. Email standards are fixed and work even with Outlook, but enterprise calendaring is different. To use that with Zimbra with Outlook, there are two additional requirements.
- You must use the paid Network Edition of Zimbra
- You must pay for each Outlook client plug-in deployed
For a small business, it is easier, much easier, to just buy MS-SBS and go.
If you want to be cheap, like us, you simply tell your users to use the Web2.0 AJAX interface built into the free Zimbra for all calendaring needs. It really is a beautiful interface with everything you expect for calendaring, email, contacts, instant messaging, and more. It is less convenient than a thick client, especially when you are off line, but it does work as expected. Heck, our CEO only uses the web interface.
Zimbra provides a java thick client, which implements everything that Outlook does and everything that the ajax web interface does … except it is big and slow, like most java applications. I let my users know about it, 3 tried it and deleted it. The complaints were it was slow and big. We all know that MS-Outlook is slow and big, but somehow that is fine, because it only feels slow and big at startup. The Zimbra thick java client was slow and big all the time.
Other non-MS-Outlook Clients
So, if you mandate no Outlook, you’ll lose. You have to replace Outlook with something better, faster and with all the same functionality. Thunderbird isn’t there, but now that they are working to increase releases, perhaps it will get there. Lightning, the thunderbird calendaring plug-in, is … buggy and basically broke. It is a read-only iCalendar client, no write. I was able to get to the point where zero calendars could be viewed, but reminders still popped up constantly with no way to write any updates back to the zimbra calendar server. Boo. I must say that Thunderbird for email works beautifully with Zimbra but IMAPS and SMTPS are very well understood protocols by all email clients. Any email client will work well with Zimbra.
I’m still looking for a good calendar server and client.
There are other options that show up from time to time. I pull them down, implement a server and try them all out. Most are toys. The Zimbra web interface is the low bar for replacement. If calendaring with a client doesn’t work better than the MS-Outlook/MS-Exchange pair, forget it. If you don’t need enterprise calendaring, there are many, many tight, small, efficient solutions for an enterprise. Heck, a small Linux server running dovecot and postfix can easily support 4000 email only users. EASILY.
No cloud here.
Most of my readers will think AND YELL – gmail and google calendar. Why don’t we just use them? Our corporate data is often sensitive. Sometimes our client’s data is sensitive too, so use of google-almost-anything is against corporate policy.
Stop the Madness
So to remove Microsoft from email and calendaring, we need:
- Server replacement that supports everything that MS-Exchange/MS-Outlook do
- Outlook replacement that supports everything that MS-Exchange/MS-Outlook do
- Enterprise management of the server
- Enterprise management of the clients
- Vibrant client plug-in community
- FOSS!!!
The shortest distance to a workable replacement is probably Zimbra / Thunderbird / Lightning team that actually works for enterprise calendaring. Doing something to help this team is something we can probably do. Let’s git ’er done.
As I actively work this, I’ll post issues and solutions. All three of these parts have had major updates since I tried them too. Perhaps it everything is already solved or at least much closer?
Just reviewed Zimbra / Thunderbird / Lightning Capabilities
Seems they aren’t even trying for complete calendar integration. They just want to view a single calendar. What a waste. Without full, enterprise calendar integration, this is DOA. Worthless for replacing MS-Outlook/Exchange installations.
July 2011 Update
A recent group of upgrades here have convinced me that Zimbra + Thunderbird v5 + the Lightning extension can fully replace MS-Outlook + MS-Exchange. These upgrades were:
- Zimbra Community Edition v7.x
- Thunderbird v5
- Lightning Extension for Calendaring
After performing these upgrades, email, calendaring, enterprise calendaring all work extremely well. I’d even say perfectly. I cannot think of anything that MS-Exchange/Outlook does that this setup doesn’t do better. I’m serious. Read more about Enterprise Calendaring and what that means.
This is a big deal. Of course, to stay on Outlook, a company would need to deploy the paid, Zimbra Network Edition, but for the rest of us, Zimbra+Thunderbird+Lightning are perfect.
