Comparing Exchange with Open Source mail systems

This is a topic which has come up on one of our internal mailing lists at work. It brought up some interesting info which I thought I would share.

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Here was the question:

A client is looking at Open Source messaging as opposed to Microsoft Exchange. We want to provide a comparison and are building a presentation around this.

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And the response:

• You can not compare a product vs an idea. Open Source is not a product.
• Open Source says, you are able to have a look into the code and change it if you are able to .
• Open Source products are not free of cost by default.
• Support is not free of costs
• Implementation and customizing is not free of costs

Following links compare exchange and certain open source products

• Exchange zu OpenExchange (www.novell.com/products/openexchange)
• Exchange zu Zafara (www.zarafaserver.de)
• Exchange zu Scalix (www.scalix.de)
• Exchange zu TeamXchange (www.teamxchange.de)
• Exchange zu Kolab (http://www.kolab.org/)

From my point of view it make sense to have a look to the rest of the environment and look for possible problems, advantages or disadvantages

– Operating system, mobile clients, infrastructure and integration, 3^rd party, user agents,

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Hope that is of use.

Cheers

Nathan