[CS-FSLUG] Help Me Keep Outlook Out (of My Church's Office)

[Stephen McCracken]

Timothy R.Butler wrote:
> solution, some other Outlook alternative for Windows. What I mean is 
> that we need shared calendars, shared address books, etc. The server 
> can run GNU/Linux or something else, but the clients must be Windows. 
> It must be as easy to use (or nearly as easy) as Outlook.
> 
>   Is there such a solution? I don't think OpenGroupware or Kolab work 
> with Mozilla to provide what needs to be provided, but correct me if 
> I'm wrong. I can't imagine having to deal with a Microsoft server and a 
> bunch of easily broken into Windows XP systems at church -- that would 
> be a mess!
>
(Disclaimer:  I am not the one who did the study and could be wrong on 
some details.  This is what I remember from discussions about the subject.)

We just did a business case study on several options (ranging from roll 
our own to Novell OpenExchange to Exchange to ...)   The problem is that 
there isn't much out there, yet to rival the calendaring aspects of 
Exchange.  For just email or personal calendars there is, but for 
sharing calendars and such, there just isn't.  You might look into 
Mozilla Calendar with WebDAV server, but that didn't get in our mix, 
because there isn't the polish there, yet.

The most expensive by far was MS Exchange (counting in resulting 
hardware costs, backup, etc.)   Bynari Insight (www.bynari.net) is our 
first choice to test out, with Kerio Mailserver on the plate, if bynari 
doesn't fit the bill.  Both are built on open source mail platforms (and 
openLDAP too, I think) with  groupware added on to emulate exchange and 
have outlook compatibility.

The other interesting thing to look at would be the Novell OpenExchange 
Server which, I think, has been mostly open sourced.  Your 1.61 
kilometrage may vary as you are talking about a church and our target is 
an organization with 10+ offices worldwide and 800-1000 mailboxes.  Your 
servers can be linux based, but work with outlook on windows or even any 
IMAP client and web based calendaring.  You could also use Evolution 
with it's connectors (I think - we haven't tested this, yet).  We are 
comfortable, for now, on leaving Outlook on the desktop to not disturb 
our users too much.  (admittedly 6 users is MUCH different than our 
situation.)

As a side point: WinXP doesn't have to be a nightmare to administer. 
Correctly set up, it can be pretty stable.  I think Ed's reminder fits 
here:  Technology is to serve us and help us fulfill what God has 
intended for us to do.  We need not get into "religious" arguments over 
Windows/Linux.  We need to see what will fit the situation best at the 
moment and not distract us, but let us move quickly on to God's purpose 
for us.

sjm