Category: Software

Zarafa Server AKA Time to replace Exchange?

Greg Leave a comment

[sc:software-category ]I’ve run my own mail server for many years (wow, just did a whois on my domain, created in 1998 and I used a different one before that for a couple of years), when I first started I was using a Unix box running SendMail and UofW’s IMAP/POP server.  These served me well for several years but as MS Outlook became my central client and the Internet became more prevalent, IMAP just no longer could do what was needed.  Calendaring was a big part of my move to Exchange and I haven’t looked back since.

However during the transition, I did resist as much as possible the move to Exchange.  For such a small domain I figured there must be a better solution.  Alas there just wasn’t any getting around it and I eventually committed fully to Exchange.  And no bones about it, it has served me well.  OWA is a great web client, support for my Windows Phone is obviously there and overall it takes little effort to maintain it.

Recently though doubt has started to creep in to my mind about running Exchange.  I currently have it running on a VM with 4 processors and 6g of RAM and I keep thinking I should setup another VM for it so I can replicate the database.  That’s a lot of resources for effectively 2 mailboxes 🙂

Likewise, moving to Exchange 2013 has been a pretty significant job and I just haven’t really gotten around to finishing it.

So I decided to do some research and to start with, what I thought would be the hardest part, ActiveSync support.  Turns out that’s not as hard as I thought, Z-Push, is an open source implementation of ActiveSync.  Z-Push supports a few backends, including IMAP and Zarafa.

Turns out that Zarafa is basically an Exchange replacement and comes in three flavours, open source, free and enterprise.  The big difference comes down to what features are available and how many users are supported.  The open source version does not include MAPI compatibility where as the free version does for 3 users.

Until very recently I would have said MAPI support was a requirement to be considered and Exchange replacement, however with Outlook 2013’s support for ActiveSync I’m no longer convinced that is true.  So much so that I’m considering doing something radical and replacing Exchange completely.

I think my first step will be to try running Outlook against Exchange using ActiveSync and see what the experience is like.  If all goes well I’ll stand up a Zarafa box and see how it goes from there.

P.S. After I wrote the above but before this post went live I did some more research and it appears Microsoft REALLY doesn’t want you to use Outlook as an ActiveSync client for anything but Outlook.com.  There is a workaround, but that seems kind of a pain in the butt…

The Opera Dilemma

Greg Leave a comment

[sc:software-category ]I’ve been an avid supporter of Opera since, well, you had to actually pay for it…

But the move to the new rendering engine in version 15 seems to have been the result of a lobotomy of the senior management at Opera.  They’ve gutted all the things that made Opera good and replaced them with… nothing.  Seriously, there’s just nothing there.  Massively important features are missing and they write it off as being driven by market research that suggests only a small percentage of users use that feature.

I’m sorry to tell you this Opera, but those are they users that spread the word about your product and get others to try it.  If you lose them, you don’t have a hope in hell of growing your user base.

It’s so bad I’m actively trying to move from Opera, there’s no point in continuing to use version 12 if it’s never going to move forward and the direction of 15 is so counter to everything I want in a browser that I’ll never be moving to it.  Back to Firefox I guess…

The Death of TechNet

Greg Leave a comment

[sc:software-category ]Over the years I have used TechNet extensively in my professional life.  The resources a subscription brought were invaluable to me.  So why has Microsoft decided to kill it?

TechNet allowed me to run a test lab at home at a reasonable price.  Allowing me to install and work with the latest products from Microsoft so I could be ready to implement them in my professional career.  Microsoft of course claims you can do testing with eval or trails, but that just makes life so much harder.

Having a permanent test lab available means I can simply pull up an RDP session to my Exchange server or SQL server and find an answer to whatever question I might have.  If instead I have to rebuild such an environment every 60 days that makes my life a lot harder.

I suspect it will become so much harder in fact I’ll not be bothered to do it, which means I’ll be less effective as a Microsoft resource and I’ll end up finding alternate software I don’t have to keep re-installing.  Perhaps I’ll install MySQL instead of MS SQL.  And since I don’t need Windows to install MySQL, perhaps I’ll install a Linux server to run it.

Who knows, maybe next time someone asks me what SQL server to install at work I’ll recommend MySQL instead of MS SQL.

The choice to kill TehcNet seems to be a very short sighted one on Microsoft’s part.  Yes there is abuse of the program and over the years they’ve significantly reduced the number of licences available to subscribers, but I don’t think the solution was to simply end the program.

Perhaps they’ll change their mind… in the mean time perhaps I’ll see what MariaDB is like.

Opera 15

Greg Leave a comment

[sc:internet-category ]Opera has released their first preview of their Chrome based browser.  The next day they also posted a follow-up to answer some outstanding questions.

First off, let me just say I’ve been a fan of Opera for a long time, back when it was not free software I PAID for it, happily.  I’ve been using it ever since and looked forward to each new release.  Opera 12 is great software.

Opera 15 looks to be a disaster.

It looks more like version 1.5 than 15 and that’s obviously due to the work required to move to WebKit.  Let’s start with the obvious deficiencies:

  • No bookmarks
  • No Opera Link
  • No home page
  • No history list
  • No status bar
  • No customization of the menus
  • No theme’s
  • No Dragonfly
  • No customization of the backgrounds in settings and speeddial
  • No search engine customization (can’t add or remove them)

This makes it impossible for me to use in day-to-day browsing and it doesn’t look any of those items will be addressed in the full release.  The comment in the follow-up post of “more features will come in future versions” could be interpreted either way, future versions of the beta or future versions of Opera (aka 16, 17, etc.).

If they don’t get their act together before 15’s release, I won’t be upgrading and might even drop Opera altogether.  After all, why choose Opera 15, with its anemic feature list over Chrome when they use the same engine?

P.S. Yes, obviously Chrome has its issues too and that whole, let Google track everything you do on the web, thing is a problem, but at least it’s matured to the point of usability.

 

Subscription Apps

Greg Leave a comment

[sc:software-category ]Ok, so let’s have a quick chat about applications that you have to “subscribe” (aka rent)…

Recently Adobe moved their Creative Suite to a subscription only model, while I don’t use Adobe, it is a “tier 1” suite of applications.  Certainly at the same kind of level as MS Office and others so for them to feel comfortable going to a subscription model is something to take note of.

Shortly after that news came out, The Register had an article talking about the possibility of MS Office going subscription only but rightly so Microsoft understands that many users still want packaged software.

Quite honestly, I’m not outright against subscription software, but it’s a hard sell as far as I’m concerned.  Unless you have ongoing development costs associated with the product (like anti-virus) or are deeply discounting the product so that the cost is averaged over 3 years, I see no value in having a subscription.  Most software works quite well without updates for years, why would I give ANY company a monthly fee for what amounts to security fixes.

But lets assume for a moment that all commercial software is moving to a subscription model, Windows, Office, and every other product I use.  What would I do about it?

My first instinct is to say I’d find alternatives.  Linux and Libre Office could handle the bulk of my daily activities, but I have to admit there are a few items I haven’t found a good replacement for.  The most obvious one is Outlook.  I know lots of people only use web-based mail these days, but I just can’t bring myself to use it as my primary interface to mail.  Outlook.com is a big step forward (I really don’t like GMail all that much, it’s just different enough from what I expect mail to be to feel off to me) but it still doesn’t compete with Outlook on the desktop.

Thunderbird, now no longer being actively developed, just doesn’t cut it.  It’s a fine mail program, but Outlook is so much more than just mail.  I’ve thought for years that if anyone really wanted to break Microsoft’s hold on the corporate desktop, they would have to start with an Outlook replacement that did as much as Outlook does.

In the end, I think I would move away from any product that went subscription only.  It might be painful in some cases, but I’d sacrifice some convince rather than support a business model I don’t agree with.