Eradicate Microsoft Exchange, YES WE CAN!

It was April 2010, the Exchange 2003 server is bloated, everybody is complaining, even Certified Microsoft engineers didn´t know what was the cause. I was dying to ditch this piece of crapware, and now I have the perfect excuse.

I have the fortune to have a very bright and open minded CEO, and after a talk with her I had "cart blanche". The only thing that she demand was to keep the costs at a minimum, and I told her: We only have to pay the hardware, no software licenses. We'll go FOSS all the way.

Several months earlier I had been searching for alternatives, and the one that catch my eye was Zimbra. It had everything a decent Collaboration Suite must have with a plus that it offers tools for migrating from Exchange.

So everything was in place, just have to wait for the new server to arrive.

In that time Zimbra was not compatible with Ubuntu 10.04, so I went with CentOS. I always have been a Debian and derivates guy, and never liked much the Red Hat way, but it was the safe choice.

Well, the migration was nothing but a success, I only have issues with Exchange Public Folders, some of the Contacts were lost. The migration tools Zimbra provide are splendid, and I bet they are even better now.

You have two options for Zimbra, the Open Source version witch is free and the paid Network one.

My plan was to even further eliminate more Microsoft over priced products. The free version lacks the Outlook connector. No worry, we'll go browser way, and that also gives me the change to obliviate Internet Explorer in favor of Google Chrome.

So no Outlook, no IE, enter Open Office. Despite some initial complaints, people get used to the new setup. Some still use Office XP, some Open Office.

The biggest drawback of the free version is the lack of a backup/recovery solution. You have to write a Shell script to make the backups (look in Zimbra Wiki).

Missing is also sync with mobile devices, but the web version is very good, I use it on my iPhone/iPad and works very well.

The Zimmlets are little javascript programs you can write to enhance  Zimbra, here the possibilities are immense.

Updates are super simple, just unpack run the script and the new version is installed.

Also you can start with this version and migrate to the paid one keeping everything, in case you need the extra features.

So yes, you can get rid of that piece of junk called Exchange, at no cost.