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Sort of :-)Sort of :-)Posted Sep 26, 2006 22:53 UTC (Tue) by drag (subscriber, #31333)In reply to: Sort of :-) by felixfix Parent article: First look: Scalix 11 Community Edition messaging server (Linux.com)
The difference is one of point of view.
You would want to buy Scalix if your interested in deploying a 'solution'. You would want to use individual software packages on a generic system such as Debian if your interesting in building your own 'solution'.
This sort of thing is aimed at people who may be alright administrators but couldn't figure out how to compile a peice of software or do a sendmail configuration to save their life. These are the sort of people that go out to Dell's website and buy a 'server' with Microsoft 2003 SBS edition installed on it and use that for a small business.
That is the market that Linux systems have failed utterly at. No penetration, no presence. No market share, no mind share. And that is not to say that Linux wouldn't work out well in a situation which SBS targets.. it's just that nobody has yet to put it in a attractive markettable package for those people yet.
This is what Scalix is attempting to do. It's a marketting thing.
""What's the point? Does it save that much time configuring and installing them to make it worthwhile for admins?""
Sometimes it will save time though if it does what you want and how you want it. For instance that Zimbra is a realy good match for many orginizations already and that would save a lot of time for some people.
HOWEVER we are not talking about targetting good admins. It is about targetting the same sort of people SBS is targetting. Those people may have a hard time figuring out to download and burn a install cdrom via bittorrent, much less setting up a corporate friendly 'solution' based on something like CentOS.
For instance IPcop is kinda like Scalix, but for a different purpose.
In my personal experiance I've fallen in love with IPcop. I got tired of dealing with my craptastic linksys router. Previous to the linksys I had a Linux-based home router/firewall I built using a old PC. So I decided to do that again with a nicer PC (as in it didn't run and sound like crap) and I 'termporarially' installed IPcop on it. I figured I would realy end up installing OpenBSD or stripped down Debian Stable and making my own router... I needed something 'right then and there', though. But damn that IPcop stuff is nice! I will still end up probably replacing it with a custom system, but right now I have lost all desire to do so as I have more important things to do.
IPcop doesn't do anything that I can't do myself using software I compiled myself. In fact I would end up using pretty much all the same software. But they do a realy good job of packaging it and putting a nice web front end on it. I don't think I could do nearly as a good job on it as they do, for being a generic 'SOHO' router/firewall solution.
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Whole more than just a sum of the parts Posted Sep 26, 2006 23:34 UTC (Tue) by dowdle (subscriber, #659) [Link] Both the Scalix product and the Zimbra Collaboration Suite have done more than just string some product together. Since I'm more familiar with Zimbra I'll talk about it.
The Zimbra web-based mail client is excellent... and as a result of all of the server apps... and a custom web-app to take advantage of all of the features in an integrated way, it truly offers something that even the best admins in the country couldn't pull off by simply stringing a bunch of server apps together... and who can afford the cream of the crop admins anyway?
Pardon me while I state the obvious... but the Internet email system is ancient and it wasn't designed to meet the security and business needs we have today. And in many areas, standards are lacking. How do disparate email clients share an addressbook? How do disparate calender applications share calendars? Contacts? What about resource (meeting rooms, multimedia equipment, etc) scheduling? What about searches (email and attachment) and advanced attachment handling? While there may be some standards in those areas, there really isn't even a difficult way (much less an easy way) to integrate all of those features into a "enterprise messaging system". Yeah, that is a unhappy phrase... so insert your desired replacement... but anyway, Microsoft did a fairly good job (have to give them kudos where it is deserved) with their Exchange Server and Outlook product lines. That isn't to say that the design, implimentation, stability and security of Exchange/Outlook measures up... but at least the feature set and integration was there... and as a result, many, many businesses, local, county, state and federal government agencies are stuck using Exchange/Outlook. I'm sure there are a large number of Exchange administrators who absolutely hate Exchange... but what alternatives did they have? ...other than other proprietary systems like Lotus Notes, etc?
I'm glad to see a few Linux alternatives spring up... that, while commercial in nature, have actually embraced the open source / free software model by offering free (both beer and speech) editions.
We definitely need more "business solutions" in the Linux business space... while keeping it open source / free software as much as possible.
So, to summarize... what do Scalix and Zimbra do? They make things previously not possible with Linux possible. Zimbra has really been innovative... and I wonder just where they are going to go with their document sharing features... but since they have given me a glimpse of what is possible with their last few releases, I'm starting to see just how much better an email system can be.
If you have no idea of what I'm talking about... and you aren't afraid to use flash... check out Zimbra's flash-based tutorials:
http://www.zimbra.com/products/demos.html
BTW, I do not work for Zimbra... I'm just a happy user.
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