[Kroupware] Kroupware replacing Exchange

[Tassilo Erlewein]

Please let me add the following to Bo's answer

On Wednesday 05 February 2003 09:04, Andre Pietsch wrote:

> 6. creating public folders storing calendar data, tasks, contact
> information and emails?

"Public Shared Folders" are functionally equivalent to IMAP shared folders.
The Kolab server provides that as it is a feature of the underlying
Cyrus Imap Daemon. The webinterface has some support for 
it which - I admit it - must be improved. So technically "everything is 
there".

The KDE client AFAIK does not yet support IMAP shared folders.
Support for shared folders is not part of the existing contract.

Outlook can at this time communicate with the Kolab server via
the Bynari Connector Plugin. It's a commercial product beyond our 
reach. Bynari, Inc. sells and supports it (www.bynari.net).
Please contact me personally if you are interested in our
experiences during testing.

There are several projects on the way to provide further support for 
Outlook. Namely, effords are going towards a so-called MAPI storage provider.
That could be a thing that talks MAPI to outlook and IMAP over
the network to Kolab. At the same time it converts the proprietary
TNEF encoding to the open format we use within Kolab (VCAL, VCARD, 
Multi-Part-MIME). So the server is open source and the email format
on the server would be standard-conformant.

>  I would like to know if it is a "philosophical" target to build a 
> OSS-replacement for Exchange.

We are formally contracted to build an Open Source Groupware Solution. 
The focus lies on the KDE client. For some time Outlook shall be usable 
with the server via additional software. 

It is important to understand that we are not contracted to replace
Exchange. We also emphasize that we do _not_ rebuild Exchange 
to run on the Linux platform.
All components of our solution are existing, proven open source projects
which we integrate to form Kolab. No effords are made to somehow
rebuild MAPI etc. Only standardized, open protocols with open source 
implementations available are used to communicate with the Kolab 
groupware server. 

We are however aware that Outlook is a very good Windows Groupware 
client and are concerned about supporting it. Right now that is done via
the Bynari plugin. Later that year alternatives may exist.

Tassilo