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The state of open source groupware

Mail Call

Article from ADMIN 28/2015

By Markus Feilner , By Dirk Ahrnke

Microsoft Exchange and Lotus Notes hold onto the big chunks of the groupware market, and social networks are rushing to transform the space. All the same, free software provides an effective and inexpensive alternative.

With all the billions that corporations spend worldwide on groupware, market shares of just a few percent are enough for smaller suppliers to survive. In this article, we look at the latest developments in the open source groupware alternatives PostPath, Kerio, Kolab, Open-Xchange, Scalix, Tine 2.0, Zarafa, and Zimbra.

PostPath

Somewhat unlucky in its hunt for customers, PostPath [1] used to have quite a solid financial basis. Up until 2008, the team originating from Bulgaria and the United States developed a replica of Exchange that ran on Linux.

Cisco then whipped out its wallet and acquired PostPath for $215 million. Cisco's stated goal: to establish the software-as-a-service offering Cisco WebEx Mail as the counterpart to offers from Google and Microsoft.

Cisco also acquired the instant messaging pioneers Jabber Inc. a few weeks later. While Jabber lives on in Cisco communications products, WebEx Mail was counted out for good in February 2011. The terse comment from a manager at WebEx: "It didn't scale."

Kerio Connect

Kerio Technologies [2] started in 1997 as a distributor of network software; the first version of Kerio MailServer was launched in 2001. From Version 7 onward, the Californians referred to the product, which had in the meantime developed into groupware, as Kerio Connect (Figures 1 and 2).

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