AW: [Kroupware] Is Kolab Exchange structure compatible

[Tobias Crefeld]

Müller, Thorsten:

> A site connector is a tool build in Microsoft Exchange Server.
> Think about the following szenario:
[nice explanation]
> All locations would be a part of the whole company exchange structure
> (no matter if it's an exchange or kolab server).

You're right: This is the way a company should connect Ex-servers between 
their branches. Additional features of connecting Ex-servers via site-
connector are the possibility to run throttled mirroring and that it's easier 
to firewall (actually firewalling exchange's rpc-communication is nearly 
impossible) their communication protocol - something X.400-like IIRC.

> In my opinion this would help Kolab for a better acceptance in big
> companies, because companies will not through away there complete
> exchange mail solutions because of this project.

IMHO Exchange-servers (especially heavy loaded ones) are the nightmare of 
every mail-administrator, so as sooner they replace them the sooner they 
can sleep well again ;) Meanwhile Oracle is offering a back-end to deal with 
Ex's instability probs - just to give you an idea of the serosity of this 
problem.
So the focus will be to offer a integrated solution parallel to an existings 
Ex-installation and connect branches via LDAP- and IMAP-replication in 
order migrate the servers ASAP. And for this goal you need tools to 
migrate accounts, mailboxes, calendars and addressbooks from Ex to Kolab 
(or whatever) overnight. This might be easier with Ex2k-servers if (!) they 
are already integrated in an ADS-infrastructure because there is a 
possibility to connect LDAP and ADS in order to use the same account. 

Without some tools to automate this job responsibles will hesitate to 
switch - at this point I would agree with you - because migrating mail 
accounts is a really nasty and expensive job. But mirroring Ex- and Kolab-
servers won't make them more stable.


> >Please explain in more detail what you're aiming at.
> >I'm not familiar with siteconnector.
> >Tassilo


Regards,
 Tobias.