Best? groupware

[Timothy Webster]

I need some advice on which groupware I should select
for small business.


The business is currently using windows XP with a
Linux file server and firewall. And has two separate
offices each with approximately 10 windows desktops.

The plan is to migrate some of the windows desktops to
knoppix (debian) desktops, in order to reduce
licensing cost.

I am currently considering kroupware, SuSE Linux
Openexchange Server, evolution connector, Open Source
Groupware (from the openoffice people).

Some requirements.
1) I don't want to buy a MS exchange server or
license.
2) Must be able to assign task and calender events to
users based on permission.
3) Must support the remote office environment I
described.
4) Must support Chinese clients.
5) Must support MS Outlook.

We have considered Lotus on a Linux server but decided
that it was over kill and did not that fact that we
would be tied into the lotus clients. Also the price
sort of scared us.

The Suse and evolution solutions are in our price
range, but the have some draw backs. We currently
don't have any suse servers. We have a Red Hat
firewall, but I plan to very soon replace it with a
debian based firewall. We are trying to reduce our
support requirements to only one linux flavour. And we
figure debian is the easiest, so is the best long term
solution. I am concerned about the evolution
connector. Did I read the requirements correctly? I
need an exchange server license? If so it is out.

Kroupware (Kolab), requires a propriety connector for
Outlook clients. That is OK with us. How mature is it?
Open Source Groupware, how mature is it?


Thank you for your advice.

-tim.

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software
[url]http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com[/url]


--
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [email]debian-user-request@lists.debian.org[/email]
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [email]listmaster@lists.debian.org[/email]

[Mark Roach]

On Thu, 2003-07-31 at 06:22, Timothy Webster wrote:

> I need some advice on which groupware I should select
> for small business.
>

[...]

> Kroupware (Kolab), requires a propriety connector for
> Outlook clients. That is OK with us. How mature is it?
> Open Source Groupware, how mature is it?

the kolab server is built on a lot of very mature open source servers,
it's hard to say how mature it is as a whole though when it hasn't yet
reached 1.0 (afaik)

I took a look it recently and it looked pretty decent, the only warts I
found were these:

- All folders as subfolder of inbox. A small thing, but you know users
- complex configuration. Not quite as simple as setting up a connection
to and exchange server, but hopefully only has to be done once
- Nasty RPM based installation. I don't know if you've installed it, but
kolab uses openpkg packages, which basically means it keeps its own rpm
database not really a terrible thing, but it will be nice when it is
packaged for debian, I think I remember seeing an ITP for kolab server
- Lots of TNEF files on the IMAP server. I was hoping that the insight
connector client would cause outlook to store its stuff in normal vcard,
ical etc formats but if it does, it is from inside a tnef file (blech)

That's about it for the bad stuff, it actually seemed to work pretty
well. The management interface is simple enough to use. I haven't tried
the kde kolab client, but it is one additional benefit to the kolab
server if you ever have plans to run linux on the desktop without the
price tag of the exchange 2000/evolution combo

-Mark


--
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [email]debian-user-request@lists.debian.org[/email]
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [email]listmaster@lists.debian.org[/email]