[Big-C]

Hi,

I'm in an environment of about 70 people (with roughly 50% macs & 50% pc's) and our boss wants to explore the option of moving away from a M$ Exchange server. He's very interested in going open source.

I've been doing some preleminary research, and we're trying to find something that will offer:

- Palm Sync
- Shared Calendaring for various groups in the org.
- Shared contact lists
- email & option for web mail access.

Pretty average stuff. I've read through some posts here about different optoins, and I get the impression that most of the new things coming out are going for an integration of Mac with Exchange server. Probably the most common situation, but it won't work for us.

So, does anybody have any ideas to meet these needs that aren't M$ Exchange? Does anybody know anything about Open Exchange that could maybe pass on their opinions - or if it will even work with OS X?

As it stands now, it looks like I'll be doing something piecemeal (different apps for each of the above functions)...

Thanks for any ideas.

-Chris

[Colddiver2]

For calendars, you can safely use iCal, Mozilla Calendar and Ximian Evolution (all supporting the .ics calendar format). All you need is a WebDAV server to host them to allow publishing and sharing. To view calendars on a web page, you can use phpicalendar on the server. Easy setup and works very well.

There are various open-source webmail options available. I have played a bit with PHP-Nuke (wich is a complete web portal system that includes some sort of webmail).

For address book, I have never researched that but I imagine googleing for LDAP will provide some insight.

On the palm side, that may be a little tricky on the PC/Windows side. Those using Apple can use iSync to sync their calendars and address book. On linux/unix, Ximian Evolution will do the trick. I don't know if there is anything on the PC/Windows side to send .ics events to a palm.

If you don't have any specific requirements on the PC side, you might as well dump Windows altogether and work with Linux, OpenOffice and Ximian Evolution. These will interact perfectly with your Macs (palm, ical, etc.).

Good luck!

Colddiver

[Griggsy]

i have the same requirements as Big-C but would like to keep outlook and also have shared public folders

any ideas?