Small Business: Microsoft Exchange or Open Source?

>From: Richard Grams

>Would you have any good leads for a calendaring/collaboration system for an
>organization the size of 150 employees?

>I suppose I am wondering, would an MS investment be the most efficient business
>tool rather than something open-source or off brand that may require much more
>hands on tech time…

Well, first off: probably the best answer to your question is Exchange. In terms of TCO and licensing, this is going to be the best deal in town. I think anybody else in this market is kidding themselves: they just don’t have the mojo like Microsoft in the small business market.

Open source would be a significant gamble for a company that size. Yes, you might save a couple of thousand on the initial software licensing expense, but the long term maintenance and management would likely be extraordinary.

If you want to play around with open source, I’d recommend Ubuntu Server (http://www.ubuntu.com/products/WhatIsUbuntu/serveredition).

A comparable groupware server (that would work under LDAP and POP3 specs in Outlook, or, you could get an open source mail client like Evolution, see below), would be opengroupware.org (http://www.opengroupware.org/en/applications/index.html).

A good productivity suite, open source, that would run well on Windows or Ubuntu Workstation, OpenOffice (www.openoffice.org).

Browser: Opera or Firefox.

And you’d need a PIM because one doesn’t ship with OpenOffice – Evolution is the best in the open source market: http://www.gnome.org/projects/evolution/

The cost of setting up and managing an open source installation is greatly diminishing. You’ll find, for example, you could get a Ubuntu Server up and running in no time, and all of these other things are installable and configurable using standard UI’s. The user experience and admin experience is a little different than managing a Windows-based client/server solution. Naturally, though, if the application’s your looking to run require a Windows server or client, you’ll be SOL without an open source or Linux-kernel alternative. This would take significant planning on your part, understanding the needs of the organization, to make this kind of call.

If you want ease of use and administration, ease of deployment and maintenance, lower TCO, constrained support, automated patches and security management, affordable licensing, and a huge user/admin community – your answer is Microsoft.

Good luck to you, sir!
R
www.micklerandassociates.com

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