What any non-Windows groupware solution really needs badly...

What any non-Windows groupware solution really needs badly...

Posted Jul 31, 2003 13:39 UTC (Thu) by eskild (subscriber, #1556)
Parent article: Kroupware Kompleted

... is rock-solid Outlook integration. Without it, no luck. Where I work we have tried out several Linux groupware products, and they all crash and burn on the Outlook integration. Some crash harder than others, but all of them crash.

The key issue here is that some of the most vocal and demanding users are non-tech people. They have a perfectly valid expectation: That things on their end "just work". And, with things like InsightConnector, they don't always.

So now I have perhaps 6 people wanting well-functioning shared calendaring, easy out-of-office, etc., and they want to do it from within Outlook. Then I have some 30 engineers which can live with most things, even if it means they had to leave Outlook. Actually, some of them even run Evolution or Mozilla for mail.

So why bother about the minority 6? Well, because they include the entire management group of the company. They will not stand down, no matter how many arguments I present against Microsoft Exchange. So it looks like I'll have to replace our aging -- but wonderfully stable -- Qmail machine (a 75 MHz Pentium, for crying out loud! :-) with a monster for Exchange. Plus pay through the nose, of course.

Bottom line: In shops with Windows on the desktop, we need rock solid Outlook integration. Otherwise Linux groupware won't get big until Linux displaces Windows on the desktop. And that may take a few weeks still...

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