Options For Good (Not Expensive) Office Backbone For a Small Startup 204
An anonymous reader writes "I recently joined a startup, we have about 10 people altogether in various roles / responsibilities, and I handle most of the system / IT responsibilities (when I'm not in my primary role, which is software development). When trying to price licenses, I'm finding Microsoft offerings require quite a bit of upfront cost, so I'm trying the alternative solutions. LibreOffice and Google Docs work fine for the most part (we also have some MS Office users); however I'm having trouble getting a good / cheap / free solution to email, contacts, calendaring and user management in general. We have some Mac users, Windows users, need desktop clients for most of these uses as well — and there doesn't seem to be a solution that satisfies these myriad combinations." (Read more, below.)
Our submitter continues: iCloud doesn't natively support non @me.com addresses (workarounds seem prone to breakage so far), Windows Live Mail doesn't support Google's CalDAV, there doesn't seem to be anything that can provide a company-wide Contacts support, etc. Ideally I can deploy a solution that has the following: Sharing calendar (or look at other people's calendar), Company-wide Contacts Address Book, Add new employee / consultants and take them offline too (in terms of user permissions, access), Clients available on Windows, OSX, possibly mobile, which support the calendaring / meeting invites / contacts list set up. Maybe I'm just out of my depths here — can Slashdot provide some direction as to what I can look at? Or is a Hosted Exchange the cheapest option? Disclaimer: I did come from a company that uses Exchange / Outlook — but the costs seem high."
Have You Accounted for User Preference? (Score:5, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
Google Apps isn't bad; they give you a plugin for Outlook which works quite nicely.
Re: (Score:2)
Can't say I've had any problems with it but I haven't rolled it out in an attempt to let Google replace Exchange; just let users install on an ad-hoc basis.
What problems have you had?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
You'll need some sort of LDAP server for the shared contacts, and other data storage (e.g. permissions, roles). The bad news is managing LDAP sucks (e.g. OpenLDAP). The good news is that almost everything supports LDAP for authentication. Even roundcube webmail works well with LDAP for auth and shared contacts.
Re: (Score:3)
There is truth in that, but this is a 10 person startup. 10 Whole people. If they're going to demand enterprise style IT, perhaps working at a startup isn't for them.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Ever work for a plce leaving the startup phase? When that 10 person startup becomes 50 people...there is a collection of random operating systems, applications, and software installed that the larger base now expects to work together. I recommend the hosted Exchange option...it scales nicely if that startup gets large. Google Apps is nice and all, until you get larger and have departments who like their resource scheduling and active sync functionality of Exchange. Migrations are a pain...so I recommend pla
Re: (Score:2)
If they spend all their bux on software licenses more appropriate to the enterprise, the only transition they will have to worry about is the one from startup to firesale.
Re: (Score:2)
The users will just say "Microsoft Office" or "Lotus Notes" and those have already been struckout as too costly. QUOTE: "good / cheap / free solution to email, contacts, calendaring and user management in general?"
Mozilla seaMonkey has all of those. Or you could try the individually separate programs of Firefox, Thunderbird, et cetera. Or maybe OPERA which has not only those functions but also online support for storage.
Re: (Score:2)
The problem with solutions other the MS Office is that you will have issues with interacting with people outside your company.
Just do the partner thing and go with a barebones MS Office (PP, Word, Excel).
The other stuff can be handled using GMail or an internal IMAP server etc.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I'm in the same position in a small business (so we're no longer a start-up after 10+ years), and after trying the "free" software route for a while I went back to all MS. 90% of the people you hire come "pre-trained" in your typical Office applications, and the savings in training cost (my time and their time) easily pays for the licenses.
It probably depends on a lot of factors like location and the product/service, but I would think in today's job market you could just hire people who are more familiar with non-Microsoft products to avoid the training issue completely. Unfortunately the submitter already works with several other people so it might already be too late for that.
Re:Have You Accounted for User Preference? (Score:5, Informative)
"The problem with solutions other the MS Office is that you will have issues with interacting with people outside your company."
This old lie again.
No you dont. WE have been on Open Office/Libre Office for over 3 years now here and have ZERO problems "interacting with people outside your company". WE can save as office format and read office format.
In fact we have less problems than one of our customers who is still on Office 2003.
Re: (Score:2)
Yet...
The amount of problems you get really depends on what you are sending and what your customer needs.
I had experience mostly in terms of Calendar Sharing. Some of it has been fixed. but I randomly got that Calendar Invite that only work in Outlook.
But these problems are smaller now then when I had the bulk of the issues, mostly due to the popularity on Non-Microsoft Cell phones, where you can say I am not using a Microsoft product and not look like you are cheeping out your organization.
Re: (Score:2)
I'd like to know what perverse little-used function people are talking about, because I and many people I know have used OpenOffice/LibreOffice for years with zero problems. The first release of OpenOffice had some formatting issues, but those were ironed out by the first dot release.
As with the GP, I have seen far more problems with people stuck on Office 2K3 or Office 2K than I have with OpenOffice/LibreOffice.
Oh, wait! Maybe you're one of the people who embeds sound effects in a PowerPoint to the
Re: (Score:3)
I have supported OpenOffice since i was Star Office, and LibreOffice today, and I have never ever seen this. We move files between all sorts of machines all the time
I support what others have said - there is far more problem moving between different versions of Word.
Re: (Score:2)
Semester projects implying you are still an undergraduate student - yet you're a "pro" (at what you don't say) that manages a huge and apparently famous laboratory (we are expected to trust you on this apparently).
Total of two people involved with the problem despite you apparently running a huge and famous laboratory.
Three times in how many years and on something as unreliable as an SD card and you have more than ONE THOUSAND servers that are "yours"?
Those things are
Re: (Score:2)
>Semester projects implying you are still an undergraduate student - yet you're a "pro" (at what you don't say) that manages a huge and apparently famous laboratory (we are expected to trust you on this apparently).
Yes I do, and yes I'd rather not share which one. (I run the build farm and health of the lab). Why would I want my /. nick attributable to my professional persona?
>Three times in how many years and on something as unreliable as an SD card and you have more than ONE THOUSAND servers tha
Re:Have You Accounted for User Preference? (Score:4, Informative)
"The problem with solutions other the MS Office is that you will have issues with interacting with people outside your company."
This old lie again.
No you dont. WE have been on Open Office/Libre Office for over 3 years now here and have ZERO problems "interacting with people outside your company". WE can save as office format and read office format.
In fact we have less problems than one of our customers who is still on Office 2003.
You must have pretty lightweight document/spreadsheet needs when sharing documents externally. I use Libreoffice at home but regularly need to remote desktop into a Windows machine at work to use MS Office because Libreoffice doesn't always work well with Office documents and spreadsheets. Word Docs aren't always formatted correctly and if I want to print it at home, I need to fix it up, or if I make edits and send it to someone else, they'll sometimes need to fix up the doc. Likewise, many spreadsheets don't even work at all with Libreoffice (for example, I can't complete an expense report spreadsheet required by our Finance Department because none of the macros work). We send and receive documents from external agencies, and I just can't see using LibreOffice to save a document when I don't know what it's going to look like on the other end.
Here's some of the challenges LibreOffice has with MS Office docs:
http://help.libreoffice.org/Common/About_Converting_Microsoft_Office_Documents [libreoffice.org]
If your entire office is on LibreOffice, I can see it working well within the office, but once you start sharing documents with external partners, I'm really surprised you've had zero problems.
Re: (Score:2)
Word Docs aren't always formatted correctly and if I want to print it at home, I need to fix it up, or if I make edits and send it to someone else, they'll sometimes need to fix up the doc.
Is this a problem limited to Libre/Open Office, or just Word Docs in general? I have heard about formatting issues when opening a .doc file in a different Office version to the one it was written in.
Out of interest, would sharing documents as PDFs externally be better, or do documents usually need editing externally as well? What about rich text format (.rtf) - editable and opens well enough in Word and Libre/Open Office (last time I checked, anyway). I'm unsure of the limitation of this compared to .doc a
Re: (Score:2)
If your entire office is on LibreOffice, I can see it working well within the office, but once you start sharing documents with external partners, I'm really surprised you've had zero problems.
It seems that the requirement to share complex documents with external recipients in Microsoft Office format is rapidly declining in my experience. In my work I am more and more discouraged to share word documents for example--it is preferred that those be kept internally and that they be put into PDF format to be sent out. The same goes for spreadsheets in many cases too. When such documents ARE widely distributed they tend to be fairly crude or simplistic--Excel spreadsheets that are basically checklis
Re: (Score:2)
Don't forget your customer needs. A lot of these tools are 99% Microsoft office compatible... That means 3 to 4 time a year you will have some issue that will require Microsoft to fix the issue, or the data that you give to your customer just doesn't load right for them.
Telling them that they should try this free software put extra burden on your customers and that isn't good. I am not saying go all out with a Microsoft Solution... But I am stating you should understand the abilities and infrastructure you
Re: (Score:2)
Well, starting out...have maybe ONE MS computer, with legal copies of office..etc...to use when the opensource you use won't work with that odd document that you just can't open or use with an opensource solution. I'm guessing for a s
Re: (Score:2)
One thing not mentioned is that Microsoft offers hosted Exchange and Office which is significantly easier to afford and maintains that warm fuzzy a lot of people have with the environment. Of course the first question as always is, what platform are most people familiar with already? Odds are they should be the target otherwise you spend a lot of time retraining which may be completely unnecessary.
In terms of a start-up, if you have a funding source they will see it as a reasonable expenditure and feel mor
Re: (Score:2)
The easiest is to just go with some hosting solution, as maintaining your own server is going to be a lot of work (upgrades, backups, security issues, etc., etc.).
For hosted solutions, I'd look into either google apps or microsoft's office365. Office365 (maybe $72/user/year) might not be quite as cheap as google's offering ($50/user/year), but it seems to be a surprisingly viable alternative to google apps. The only possible issue that I've found with office365 is that password aging is turned on. Not on
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Well, the problem is in your first line - "surgical center". Of course they'll be less willing to train because they have other work to do. IT's a necessary evil these days for everything, and users are often forced to use computers because it's a required part of their job.
The "surgical center" has nothing to do it - surgical center office workers aren't different than those in other industries... it doesn't matter whether he said "warehouse office", "non profit childcare center", or "space center mission control", people in all of those companies all have other work to do, just want to get their job done, and don't want to learn something new.
Re: (Score:2)
I think it's compared to an software or engineering company. Techies like to dick around with these things more than GP's examples and your examples.
Even software and engineering companies have administrative assistants, finance people, marketing people and the like that prefer not to dick around with these things.
Sure, a 3 man Linux consulting firm might get away with mandating LibreOffice (until they need to submit a proposal in MS-Word format or open a customer's MS-Word RFP with embedded graphics and AutoShapes), but a 50 person office is going to have a much harder time of it.
zimbra (Score:5, Informative)
Zimbra I believe does most if not all of what you are looking for.
Kolab and Citadel (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
It's what we use, and for "free" it's great.
Re: (Score:2)
Absolutely... it works good enough to be used by the University I work at (I don't think the students use it.. at least not yet... it's more of a faculty/staff deal right now)
More Google (Score:2, Informative)
Have you considered Google Apps? It is free for up to 10 users. You can use Thunderbird with a couple of plugins to handle the desktop client or just have your people use the web apps which are very good.
Google for Business? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Google for Business? (Score:5, Insightful)
If you're not in the U.S., putting your data under U.S. jurisdiction *can* be an unacceptable risk.
Protections for non-citizens, non-residents are pretty slim.
Re: (Score:3)
Protections for resident citizens are pretty slim as well.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
They're Google. They already have all your data. All. Your. Data.
It's creepy, but it does have its advantages. Yesterday I couldn't find my car keys, so I googled them. Turns out I had left them in my gym bag.
Re:Google for Business? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Google for Business? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
If you'd like to stay with Microsoft (Score:5, Informative)
Re:If you'd like to stay with Microsoft (Score:5, Interesting)
Yep - the magic words to google are "Microsoft Action Pack Subscription" - for startups it's great. Tons of useful software for cheap. You may also qualify for BizSpark which is even better (and cheaper - although $500 isnt too bad.)
Re: (Score:3)
I'm amazed how many people are saying Microsoft. In essence you're saying Open Source solutions shouldn't even exist, because they are a non-starter. No wonder Intel and MS continues to hold a monopoly over the OS and Apps and computer platform since ~1988.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Would you also be amazed to discover that Microsoft holds a monopoly because its products are better than the competition's?
Re: (Score:2)
>>>Would you also be amazed to discover that Microsoft holds a monopoly because its products are better than the competition's?
Yes.
I don't see how IE is any better than Firefox, seaMonkey, or Opera. Or Lotus Notes better than Thunderbird. I don't see how Office is any better than OpenOffice.org or LibreOffice. I don't see how WMP is any better than VLC Player or Winamp. I don't see how MS Torrent... oh wait they don't have that... well I use uTorrent.
About the only Microsoft product I use at ho
Re: (Score:2)
Because Open Source solutions just don't cut it. Intel and Microsoft are successful by providing the best quality products.
Re: (Score:2)
if he's really a small startup, there's no reason why he shouldn't get the stuff for free from MS, so he should join bizspark. a free sub for two years(and you'll get to keep the sw now too after the two years, at least that's what they told us), possibly even free swag(they were giving away windows phones last winter for example..). there's some free azure time thrown in now too..
http://www.microsoft.com/bizspark/SoftwareAndTools/ [microsoft.com]
Re: (Score:2)
Your sig... Care to expand ?
I can't even find my original of that LP any more :(
Re:If you'd like to stay with Microsoft (Score:4, Insightful)
Professionalism.
99% of my customers run Windows and MS Office. That's the standard business environment. By sticking with it, I have fewer problems exchanging documents with my customers. That's a business expense that has to be accounted for. If your staff or customers can't open a spreadsheet, they're wasting their time and they drag IT into it, wasting more resources, and on top of that, you have angry, frustrated customers.
Personally, I like Outlook as a mail client. However, Exchange is awful to deal with. It's just not geared towards the smaller business. I would definately recommend either outsourcing the mail server or using something less complex. What you ultimately use will probably be dictated by what type of phones your employees carry.
Re: (Score:3)
"Everything is GPL, most of our systems can't run 90% of the apps you have on your list, now go screw yourself".
And the other 364 days of the year when you AREN'T getting audited but you ARE trying to get something productive done, you can tell your boss the same thing!
Re: (Score:2)
and then the Auditor Drones demand receipts for EACH AND EVERY installed copy of EVERY program.
i have heard that they have demanded receipts/purchase orders (with serial numbers) even if you have all of your "magic stickers". trust me if they get going they will find a way to fine you massively.
Re: (Score:2)
It varies on which version you get - some of them you can (or could - been a couple of years since I used it). That is a warning sign though - some of the dev ones (with visual studio/etc) are testing only, same as MSDN.
Check this one out .... (Score:5, Interesting)
Have you looked at... (Score:2)
If you meet the requirements, why don't you do BizSpark [microsoft.com]?
Pretty sure Google Apps for Business also meets your requirements, but it's around $50 per year per user.
Web-Based Google (Score:2)
Google Apps? (Score:2)
I didn't see you mention Google Apps [google.com]. My company (500'ish people) are all on Google Apps and I really like it. Plus its free for up to 10 users, so you could at least give it a test drive. It integrates email, calendar, docs, and contacts all into one package (with names shared between each).
Google Docs (Score:4, Insightful)
You said Google Docs works fine for the most part, but the Gmail / Calendaring portion doesn't work?
We are a startup (about 25 employees) and Google Docs works fine for Email and Calendaring.
Re: (Score:2)
Completely agree. We're at 25-30 people now, but gmail was what saved us in our early years. We actually bought a Windows Server SMB edition, but never got around to installing it. We used a NAS box for the first 366 days until it crapped out on us. (Lesson-- after 90 days we should have bought a redundant NAS to work with cashflow...)
Today we have to reconsider if gmail is worth the price, and we have proper file servers with redundant snapshots and all that fun stuff. But when $15 matters, gmail is t
I'm not any sort of IT/implementation guy but... (Score:5, Insightful)
Before making any decisions, I'd consider asking your admittedly tiny user base what software/suites they need/want instead of just making blind purchasing decisions
Re: (Score:2)
This can't be stressed enough. Pay a premium for the highest level of service and support you can get. I know that sounds counter-intuitive, but if you actually have money (as opposed to ten guys bootstrapping the business on cheetos and tap water) it will cost you less than the time you spend to get it done, and it WILL NOT BE YOUR RESPONSIBILITY to keep it running smoothly. Never underestimate the time it takes to manage such a system if it's not your core function.
Think of it this way - your billing rate
Re: (Score:2)
*This*, IT loves to be penny wise and pound foolish.
Software is cheap. All software is practically free. If your employees are bringing in $100-$200 an hour then if the infrastructure costs $200 per employee it's .1% of their revenue. If it costs then 1 minute per *WEEK* then the difference between a free and $100 program pays for itself over the course of a year.
Lion Server? (Score:4, Funny)
I've only used mine (and that's a Snow Leopard Server, not Lion) at home, but it would seem to support a lot of what you are asking for, including, I believe, workgroup management for Windows users. You'd need to find clients which would talk to the various server-side applications, and I'm afraid I've no experience of that.
Again from memory, and I may be wrong, my recollection is that Lion Server does not require client licences, so, once you've bought the box, and installed the software, you can connect as many people as it will handle, which might help keep costs down.
Re: (Score:2)
Perhaps I should have said: calendaring uses CalDAV, and the address book uses CardDAV — whether or not there are Outlook connectors / addons for these, I don't know, but there appear to be at least some Windows-based clients for each (Cal [calconnect.org], Card [calconnect.org]). Although whether your userbase would want to use these rather than Outlook is perhaps more questionable.
Easy -- Google Apps (Score:5, Insightful)
Just use Google Apps. Provides email, calendaring, etc all integrated and very inexpensive.
Microsoft Action Pack (Score:2)
Zarafa (Score:2)
Have you had a look at Zarafa [zarafa.com]? It's an open source replacement for exchange which handles email, calendaring and contacts. If you ran a server with this then your co-workers could connect with their favourite mail client/calender app, or use the webclient. It also supports Z-push which works like active sync for use with android and windows mobile devices.
I have an instance of it running on a custom built mythbuntu PVR at home to provide me with something other than google calendar to use with my android.
Th
Re: (Score:2)
Zarafa doesn't seem too bad, but I think it's positively stone age when it comes to mail filtering. Zimbra is much better in this, as is google apps or a hosted exchange solution (like office365).
Count (Score:2)
You're not sure how many people work at your company?
zentyal/zarafa (Score:2)
I just moved a smaller business (about 40 people) to zentyal. http://www.zentyal.org/ [zentyal.org] includes all sorts of features, like a PDC if you want one, ldap for user management, vpn, groupware (uses zarafa, which is excellent) and many, many other features.
Homogenization (Score:2)
Definitely ask your users what they want to use. However, they're all going to say something different. You won't be able to make them all happy and certainly not for cheap/free. You may just have to pick one solution that everyone can live with and standardize the network in that solution. "Oh, you can't use $OTHER_DEVICE with our free solution? Well, you can either buy a copy yourself or use the solution we all agreed on." Supporting many different platforms is difficult and can be expensive.
office 365 or google docs (Score:2)
10 people you shouldn't be thinking about managing your own servers. just pay for google docs or office 365.
from what i heard office is a lot better than google docs, but i never used it
Cloud Hosting for only 10 People (Score:2)
Horde (Score:2)
Have you checked out Horde [horde.org]? I think it does everything you're asking, except the desktop client.
The needing of a desktop client is, I think, your toughest requirement. If you can let that one go, it's easy.
Exchange server (Score:2)
I know people hate this stuff... it's microsoft and thus evil... but if you want a user friendly, feature rich, small business email server... It's honestly pretty good.
I'm sure there are free linux alternatives... if you want go with one of them. I'm sure they're great too. I have a lot of experience with exchange and outlook. They're really good at what they do. And while it probably won't scale to google gmail levels it's actually very good even in enterprises.
Do what you like but I like exchange.
What about SBS? (Score:2)
If you want Exchange, it's worth looking at SBS - it's pretty much all you'd need, and it works fine with mobile. Not sure about how OSX would play on the domain though.
office365 (Score:2)
I just set up office365 for my Dad's small business. It costs $6/user/month if you just want email and online editing of word+excel+ppt, or $20/user/month if you want desktop versions of the software as well. (Both offer free trials). That's not a big upfront cost at all!
Kerio (Score:2)
http://www.kerio.com/connect/exchange-alternative [kerio.com]
Been here multiple times (Score:5, Informative)
As a founder of two startups we're been here multiple times. Here's what I've found.
Google (email and docs) works okay for very early stage (engineering only - no sales/marketing people - little need to communicate outside of the company).
As we got closer to launch and hired more outbound people we moved to using Hosted Exchange (Intermedia.net). Outlook is the driving force here, I have code to write and don't want to spend my expensive time fixing email/calendar/desktop support issues.
For Office applications we joined the Microsoft ISV program where we get 10 licenses for all their office products for about $400 per year. That also includes MSDN access so engineering can use Visual Studio.
Engineering does not use Office, all internal engineering documents are on the hosted Wiki (Atlassian) - but the hosted Exchange comes with an Outlook license so developers use that. I will neither help or hinder the use of anything else.
Everyone uses Windows on their laptop - using VMware Workstation to run the Linux VMs used for development.
We run the entire business on hosted services (Intermedia, Atlassian, JungleDisk (backup) and VirtualPBX). Our monthly bill is ~$600 for a 25 person startup - core engineering is now about half the company.
We have ~60 servers - but all are for dev and test, there is no "IT overhead"
The issue is not that you can't make it something else work - but why ? Unless you're developing an office or email software its just not a good use of your expensive (unique) resources. The goal of your company should be to efficiently sell more of your products to people that are likely using Microsoft products (at least the decision makers). So for maximum interoperability and profession appearance use the products your customers are using.
(I use a Mac, but I cannot use it for anything for external communication (PowerPoint, Word etc) - somethings just look different to the Windows version (fonts, text positioning etc). Not all the time, but enough to make it unusable from a professional appearance point of view.
Office 365? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
A small business office365 account is $6/user/month or $72/user/year (up to 50 users). If you're willing to go email/calendars only, it's $4/user/month.
Zimbra would work! (Score:2)
Zimbra fits your roll perfectly. It's able to scale to the levels of the University I work at, so I'm sure it could handle a 10 man team.
It also supports ActiveSync pushing so it can automatically send appointments to your iPad/iPhone/Android device etc. It also web browser based so no need for a stand alone email client (but you could still use one if you wish).
Also, you can view other peoples Calendars, etc.. and push invites to those people (which my boss does.. she'll push out maintenance calls etc to a
Office 365 gives you web and desktop clients (Score:2)
Alternatives Are Available Now. (Score:2)
What is really heartening to me, by the way, is how our own users are embracing alternatives -- in fact, we are moving to iPads and Android tablets after years of buying standard Dell and Gateway laptops with MS Office installed. I still use a laptop, but I run OpenSuse Linux on it and LibreOffice is plenty good enough for everything that I do in my job (engineering management).
Now, just a few years ago, if I'd tried to get anyone to try anything other than XP or Vista with MS Office, they would have compla
The easy way... (Score:2)
Is to use the mail system included with most web hosting deals, the always give multiple options (IMAP, POP3, Etc) plus lots of extras. Then use T-bird, Firefox, Libra Office, Ubuntu for your desktop/laptop and pick up at least one of the many 2+ terabyte NAS devices tat can be had for less than $300 (backup & user files).
Really? (Score:2)
10 people
user management
What is wrong in this picture? Or, to be more blunt, what are the real intentions of posting this question here?
What kind of startup? (Score:2)
Are you the "grab as much money from investors and run" kind of startup? Then it doesn't matter.
If you are the "we want to build a sustainable business" kind of startup, then please as fast as you can, get rid of the cancer of "Office" software. Those packages probably are the biggest productivity robber you can have.
Then make sure you have all your data in open, preferably text-based formats.
Believe me, in a few years you'll be thanking me when either smarter start-ups with automation compete with you, or
Bedework, a CalDAV server (Score:2)
Re:Google Apps + Thunderbird & Lightning (Score:4, Informative)
Definitely this. The web clients are the best out there, plus Thunderbird + Lightning is less annoying than Outlook and works on everything. And I seriously doubt you could find a mobile device that doesn't support Gmail + Google Calendar.
Does this method have a good way to handle company-wide contact lists though? I guess you could setup your own LDAP server but I doubt Gmail's web interface will use it.
Re: (Score:3)
Thunderbird works fine with LDAP, and you can use the GMail IMAP facility so you never really need to use GMail webmail.
Re: (Score:2)
And I seriously doubt you could find a mobile device that doesn't support Gmail + Google Calendar.
Have you tried using iDevices with Google Calendar? They suck!
I have simple requirements: I want to be able to create events on my personal calendar that can have two reminders (I usually have one the day before to get materials together, then another an hour or two before so I can get to the meeting) and I want to have the "Phases of the Moon" and "Australian Holidays" shared calendars as well. There's no clean, simple way to do it on iDevices.
If you create an ActiveSync account you can get all three calen
Re: (Score:2)
I'm pretty sure the "single reminder" issue is a limitation of ActiveSync. If you use an app like "calengoo" or "calendars", you can set multiple reminders (I believe these sync directly with google calendar, and bypass ActiveSync).
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Get an office365 subscription.
Hosted exchange + the full office suit. Honestly it's a decent way to do this until you decide to roll your own infrastructure. If you ever do. (We have it scaled across 15 companies and ~1200 users)
And we all know what the 365 in the name means : it's down every February 29th
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Ughhhh... a company I worked with had Zimbra and it was terrible. It kind of did all of the things exchange did poorly.
Then they got bought out and now they use an ancient version of Exchange... which isn't much better.
I have no personal preference for exchange. I prefer Gmail. And I don't see why the OP can't mix it up.
Use Gmail for your mail service and use Microsoft Office for your word processing and Excel. The notion that your mail server and productivity software need to be the same seems misplac
Re: (Score:2)
I get to deal with open source hippies every week.
They are so proud when they manage to do something in open source that Microsoft solutions already do by default.
Re: (Score:2)
+1 on that solution.
2 notes:
1. If you grow something out (e.g. mail server is too much simplified), you can simply install any Unix software from package or compile your own (e.g. Sendmail, Exim, or Apache/PHP if you want more modules, standard paths).
2. I honestly like the old server offering better. Lion's server IMO is dumbed down beyond dumb and after using the previous server (both on a mini and an actual Apple rack mountable server) it really is a step back in configurability
Either way, it is small, q
Re: (Score:2)
Explaining a joke is like dissecting a frog. You understand it better when you're done, but the frog [imdb.com] dies.