Re: [SLE] Avoiding Microsoft Exchange Server

On Monday 15 May 2006 5:33 pm, Hans du Plooy wrote:
On Mon, 2006-05-15 at 15:48 -0400, Paul Abrahams wrote:
I'm doing some pro bono computer consulting for my local municipal
offices, and as part of that project I've installed a Linux server that
does automated backup (hurrah for rsync) and also provides a file
repository. However, the town wants to get a Microsoft server because
some of the network application they're getting (municipal taxes,
accounting, etc.) assume that environment.

If you tell us which applications they're wanting, we may be able to
help. I don't see you mentioning Exchange in the mail, so I can only
guess that it's the usual shared calenders&contacts (that work with
Outlook) they're after. For that there are a host of groupware
solutions that will give you that, ranging from free to more expensive
than Exchange itself.

The applications are municipal accounting and tax processing according to the
state laws of Massachusetts. Pretty specialized, and people are accustomed
to it. Given the situation at the Town Hall, suggesting alternate
applications software -- and it probably doesn't even exist -- is not going
to get anywhere. These people are generally quite content to use Microsoft
stuff, so the only hope is to offer them an alternate system that looks to
these applications just like Microsoft. VMware might be a possibility, I
suppose, but that still would require buying Microsoft software, wouldn't it?
And in that case, given the low price of hardware, is there much of a cost
savings by going with the Linux / VMware approach?

Software licensing issues aside, I cannot really complain too much about
the more recent versions of Exchange. I have it running at a site
behind a postfix box, and I've had no hassles so far. Took a while to
figure out how to get it to play nicely (some mailboxes are on the Linux
box, some on Exchange), but it's been almost a year now.

It may be that the best I can hope for is to have two servers, one for
backup / file storage (Linux) and one for these municipal apps (Windows
Server). I was able to make the case for the backup server because it does
the job very well, the entire cost was under $500 (hardware and software),
and no one knew how to do as well with Windows. The backup server
automatically collects files from the various computers in the office without
any action on the part of the office staff. Except for this server, all the
computers are Win machines.

But let us know what the exact needs are. Chances are someone will have
done it :-)

As far as I know, Linux doesn't even have the equivalent of TurboTax -- the
open source community is, understandably, disinclined to generate software
that requires a major annual update driven by changes in government
regulations. And state finances are far more specialized than that.

Paul



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