Open-source Challenge To Exchange Gains Steam 164
jbrodkin writes "An open-source, cloud-based e-mail alternative to Microsoft Exchange called Open-Xchange has signed up two new service providers and predicts it will have 40 million users by the end of 2011. Based in Germany, Open-Xchange has tripled its user base from 8 million to 24 million paid seats since 2008, with the help of three dozen service providers including 1&1 Internet, among the world's largest Web hosting companies. Microsoft is still the 800-pound gorilla, with a worldwide install base of 301 million mailboxes in 2010, expected to reach 470 million by 2014. But Open-Xchange is luring numerous service providers who are wary of Microsoft's attempts to compete against its own partners by selling hosted e-mail services directly to its customers."
Re:google apps ftw! (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:google apps ftw! (Score:4, Interesting)
it's also wholly unsuitable for any business needing absolute confidentiality, just like every cloud solution
Just like every solution that involves clients, nodes, servers, networks, and software not designed, built, operated, and controlled only by you. Which is pretty much all of them.
If your communications are so sensitive that HTTP over SSL with a corporation that offers you an SLA isn't enough, and you choose to send email in the clear without encryption, then your communications obviously aren't as sensitive as you think.
Re:PCI compliance? (Score:2, Interesting)
HIPPA appears to be largely unenforced:
Between April 2003 and Nov. 30, the agency fielded 23,896 complaints related to medical-privacy rules, but it has not yet taken any enforcement actions against hospitals, doctors, insurers or anyone else for rule violations. A spokesman for the agency says it has closed three-quarters of the complaints, typically because it found no violation or after it provided informal guidance to the parties involved.
I'd be very concerned about any company that is sending info by email that related to the HIPPA rules.
I read up on SOX. Does seem to be a big deal although I still can't see how Google's solutions don't comply.
If such claims are going to be made specify what doesn't comply. I'm not saying you are wrong. Only that people have made these claims repeatedly without backing it up.
Re:OpenChange and SOGo - Truly free/freedom Exchan (Score:4, Interesting)
OpenChange is very promising, but hardly production ready.
SOGo is not a feature per feature match for OX, Scalix, Zimbra or Zarafa. These are all mature projects with a large installed user base. If you are worried about license fees (which usually include paid support), you can always use the free editions of these projects and not use Outlook.
Re:PCI compliance? (Score:5, Interesting)
As far as I can tell, SOX is probably the second-most over-hyped piece of legal misunderstanding promulgated as fact on Slashdot, position #1 being the recurring myth that ISPs are subject to common carrier regulations.
SOX applies to public companies only. From Wikipedia, it does not appear to place any specific requirements on corporate IT, except that the corporate IT will be audited for compliance with the "normal" parts of the law -- so you have to keep records on various things. This hasn't stopped people from making shit up -- if the law specifies that certain data must be "retained" for X months, Slashdotters and charlatans selling "SOX compliance" services are going to say that means the law says you have to use RAID 1000000 and update your offsite backups every 2 days. Just, cuz, you know, that's standard practice.
The law -- and I haven't read it, but I can guarantee you OP hasn't either -- doesn't say anything like that. Just like it doesn't say you have to chisel your non-digital documents in titanium sheets in case the building catches fire. It's not specifying particular standards -- it's just saying you can't be Enron. If the building catches fire or the hard drive crashes, well, you know, shit happens. Whether not installing sprinklers or not having backups was negligent or in bad faith is for a court to decide. So far, it hasn't come up.
OP -- and I don't know him, and he's probably a nice guy -- may now tell me about his personal experience with how Fortune 500 companies DO chisel Xeroxes into titanium and DO use RAID 1000000 and daily updated offsite backups AND ANYTHING ELSE IS NEGLIGENT AND WOULD GET ME THROWN INTO JAIL IN THE "REAL WORLD". And I'm probably going to ignore him because this post took all the time I want to spend talking about this. But: unless he backs his claims up with a statute, a court case, or at least a letter ruling from some relevant executive branch agency ... I'd be suspicious, man. Think of all the corporate incompetence with information management (laptops with credit cards gone missing ... oops) you hear about on Slashdot. Now think if Slashdot talks about anyone going to jail for that, or even getting in any real trouble.
---linuxrocks123