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EGroupware, Group Office, and Kopano compared

Teamwork

Article from ADMIN 59/2020

By Erik Bärwaldt

We compare three popular packages that are designed to simplify teamwork: EGroupware, Group Office, and Kopano.

Groupware can streamline workflow in a company, but the functionality of different solutions varies greatly. For groupware to facilitate teamwork, it needs to anticipate the diversity of work processes and the historic structures in organizations of different sizes. As a flexible solution, it not only needs to modernize outdated processes, but boost efficiency and productivity, as well. In this article, I discuss the possibilities some groupware packages that are off the beaten track (see the "Not Considered" box) open up in a comparison of EGroupware, Group Office, and Kopano.

Not Considered

Because of the many groupware packages available, I specifically considered solutions whose functional range stands out from the crowd. The choices appear to be particularly suitable for certain target groups, thanks to a special focus such as security or ease of installation and configuration. I have avoided packages that are little known in the non-English-speaking world, such as Feng Office [1]. This review also ignores groupware packages for Linux that are, to a considerable extent, under proprietary licenses, such as Zimbra [2].

Conversion

If you are thinking of introducing a groupware solution, you need to consider several important criteria. In addition to the scope of existing functions, data protection and the ability to adapt to new working methods play a role. Open source applications help you take data protection seriously by running on an on-premises server so that data does not end up with third parties.

Two different strategies present themselves: With conventional client-server infrastructures, the data is stored on the server.

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