ActiveSync in 11.4

[shr]

We had some issues with Outlook stability & bugs with 11.4.1 & 11.4.2...but since upgrading to 11.4.3, things have been rock solid. (Job well done Scalix!) Hopefully Activesync will be on par with the quality of 11.4.3 and it will be worth the wait.

Many thanks, we will try this.

Also, shr...I see you only have 3 total posts (all about activesync). Why not post some of your Outlook troubles on the forum for us to help sort out?

Good comment, also by Florian above. We are serviced by a free lancer, but using a commercial version. I was so put off by the false predictions by the free lancer on the ActiveSync issue that I wanted a direct line to Scalix on this matter. I will ask for 11.4.3. and post any troubles we still have to the respective boards.

[florian]

... just to let you know that the good-to-go emails for Beta 1 went out to the invitee list; this is a limited-access beta program, but the download is available for those folks signed up for it today.

If you are a customer or partner and you need to get on this, please contact your Scalix sales rep and they will see if they can add you to the list.

Depending on how things go, we'll launch a more public beta program soon or go for the GA release right away.

Cheers,
Florian

[Kris]

I've installed the beta 1 of Scalix AS. Really easy to install, I had it up and running in 15 minutes, including configuring our Apache SSL-proxy machine that is between internet and the AS server.

So far as I can see at the moment, it works great!

One question: one of the limitations mentioned in the release notes, is that downloading of attachments on received emails is not supported. Will this be supported in a future release, or is this a limitation in the AS protocol?

[florian]

Kris,

the fact that downloading attachments does not work in Scalix ActiveSync Beta 1 is a limitation in the current code; this will be enabled in a further beta release or in the finished GA product.

As a remark, however, please be politely reminded that technical issues and problems with the beta version of the software shall not be discussed or disclosed on any public forums, including this one - if you are a beta program participant, you agreed to this term as part of the beta license agreement when installing the software; if you have feedback or questions, the download instructions you received should have had a link to the official feedback form, which we will process similar to a support case. The intention of this restriction is simply to make sure that limitations of a beta-grade product are not suddenly viewed as overall product issues, which quite often they are not.

With this being said, thanks for your positive feedback. AFAICS and monitoring the Beta support channel, this is very much inline with other people's experiences and if this continues I strongly believe we're on track for a broader release of the product pretty soon.

Cheers,
Florian

[Kris]

Sorry about that I will use the feedback form if I have any more questions regarding the beta.

[florian]

Kris - no problem; meant to be a very, very, very friendly reminder, especially given nature of your feedback.

Hope you understand that we'd just like to avoid people "bitching" about issues in a beta product in a public forum, especially given that these pages based on their activity usually rank pretty high on Google (which, if you're looking for technical solutions is a very good thing!). We are open to all sorts of feedback in public in general, including challenging and critical - that's the price we are more than willing to pay once we label a product as being publicly available.

Again, thanks for your feedback, very much appreciated; by the way, I re-read the AS beta release notes and must admit that we should have made it more clear which of the limitations listed are part of the beta or the general product.

Best and looking forward to hear more,
Florian.

[shr]

We had some issues with Outlook stability & bugs with 11.4.1 & 11.4.2...but since upgrading to 11.4.3, things have been rock solid. (Job well done Scalix!) Hopefully Activesync will be on par with the quality of 11.4.3 and it will be worth the wait.

To report back on this, 11.4.3 was a big success. the update process was painfree and the release adressed virtually all of the troubles we had with outlook. Now I am really looking forward to active sync, the feedback that did leak from beta1 seemed positive. I am happy I can forget plans of deinstalling Scalix now.

[Olger]

Hi Robert,

unfortunately the answer is no; one thing is that the license we have from Microsoft is something we have to pay for as well and we are offering the product at a pretty competitive pricing with very little profit on our side actually. We decided to go this way to be able to offer our customers a legally sound solution that is not reverse-engineered and also as full-featured as possible, based on the official specs from them.

Furthermore, please also - as a community user - understand that we have to continue offering some features for the commercial versions only as this is what we ultimately need to survive as a business. We're running a major and complex software development organisation with quite a number of people involved that rely on their paychecks - at the end of the day we need a certain level of commercial success to be able to provide things such as Scalix Community Edition for free, which we will happily continue to do.

We do believe, however, that making a cut with ActiveSync is logical and makes sense - most wireless devices would do mobile email over simple IMAP, which is free. Someone who really needs the additional features of ActiveSync, such as Push Email, wireless real-time calendar and contact synchronisation and system directory access is most likely someone who uses this for work or in a business. I think it is fair that such a person should pay us something, and given that the smallest packaging of Scalix is a Small Business Edition for 20 Users, that, together with ActiveSync, will sell for less than $1000 end user list price, I would feel it's reasonable.

If this is too expensive for you, you may want to look out for hosted Scalix altogether, which more and more hosting providers start offering. This is especially true as with rising energy cost, just running a full-fledged server machine on your own becomes expensive, especially when you add the cost to administer and maintain.....

All good things and sorry not to have better news here,
Florian.

Hi Florian,

I perfectly understand the fact that you guys are running a business that in the end needs to pay peoples wages and preferably also make some profit...

However, please do not forget that all those people running Scalix' community edition also provide you guys with improving and developing the product. Free of charge...

I'm running Scalix for about 6 months now with great satisfaction. I got my familiy members on it and we use the calendar function a lot. Now my girlfriend and myself recently purchased and iPhone 3G. With umts/hspda prices dropping, e-mail on the mobile device is becoming more and more a thing of the general society and less of the business community. However, for the general public, paying $1000 for a private e-mail solution is (IMHO) not 'something'. It is way too much...

Also, as you say about 90% of all 3G devices support/use ActiveSync. So people (not only businesses) need products that support ActiveSync to be able to use these devices as being advertised and more importantly as they would like.

I would therefore strongly ask you to reconsider making ActiveSync available as a separate purchase.

Best regards,
Olger
(The Netherlands)

[florian]

Olger,

thanks for your feedback; first of all, your commitment to Scalix is very much appreciated and thanks for the positive feedback.

I also do understand your situation. Unfortunately I don't think we ca fix this from our time anytime soon, although we'll certainly continue to monitor demand and may reconsider based on this.

One of the problems is the licensing mechanism we use; at this point, while ActiveSync is a separate product, the licensing is tied into the Scalix server's license key that the AS server connects to. Community Edition doesn't have a license key, so to enable this we would have to change the Scalix server's license mechanism and... the way this is built, such change would be quite work-intensive, therefore expensive for us to do.

Furthermore, we don't currently run an online store for Scalix products, given that most of the business goes through resellers as customers going for Scalix typically need some services in setting up and optimizing their email environments. So to be able to handle small transactions (and a 5-10 user active sync license would probably be 100-150$, so it's fair to say that this is something of a small transaction) we would need to change this, and again, this is quite a bit of change in process.

Finally and just for my understanding - what would you think is an acceptable price point for such a personal email solution. I just googled around, the cheapest iPhone plan in the Netherlands offered by T-Mobile is EUR 30 per month. Therefore, for two phones you pay a minimum total of EUR 720 per year. If you operate your own server, connected to the Internet, may I also assume that this will probably cost you about EUR 300 per year, either in hosting fees or through your power bill (a basic PC running continously is about 20-30 EUR/month in electrical power, at least in Germany), etc. So... in a way you're already kinda paying a lot more money per year for your stuff than we would charge for the solution, and in our case it's basically a one-time price, with a relatively moderate additional yearly component should you want to be able to purchase all the upgrades.

Please don't get me wrong drawing up those numbers and I well understand that I can't just throw in your total mobile phone cost and compare it with "just" the email backend server; it's just me trying to understand the thought process - we've had similar discussions when we were (and actually still are) offering a 3rd-party mobile solution for the Blackberry that runs at a cost point of about EUR 10 per user per month - some people called that expensive; I was then talking to some of them and their typical Blackberry user had a monthly phone bill of about EUR 150 including international roaming charges and else, so that made me wonder if it's really too much to ask for us (or in that case our mobility partner) for a share in that order of magnitude, given we're providing a substantial part of the technology stack required to run this stuff, including development, support, services and else.

Another question - and again, not pointing anywhere, just curious. Given the cost of operating your own server and given the risks of keeping this on a probably pretty low-end machine outside a formal datacenter and with little SLA behind it - would it be relevant and interesting for you to just get Scalix as a service from a hosting provider? If so, what amount of money would you consider an adequate price point for a five user package (on a monthly basis), for hosted Scalix, including mailbox backup, proper SLAs, ActiveSync support and access to this through SWA, ActiveSync, IMAP and also Outlook/UAL? We are working with an increasing number of hosting providers (not sure if we have one in the NL already, but I will ask!) to get such offerings to the market, and I believe they should be much more cost-effective for both small businesses and home use.

Any thoughts appreciated, and I mean that,
Florian

[Olger]

Good evening Florian,

Thanks for your elaborate reply. Some really interesting thoughts I may say.

About the license key issue: too bad but that's the way it is. Hope something can be done about this as this may become a bottleneck for future developments as well.

5 ActiveSync licenses for 100 euro? I'm game should ActiveSync licenses become available at that pricepoint!

About your comment on T-mobile pricing for iPhone subscription. Yes, it's quite expensive but don't forget:
1. You get the nitty gritty iPhone as well
2. Here in Holland T-Mobile (unfortunately) has the sole right to sell the iPhone (and we're told it's all about choice huh... )
3. The iPhone does more than just sync e-mail and calendar

My server also acts as a home file/mediaserver (through MediaPortal) and monitors my DSL line performance etc. (high geek level here... ).
So it's on anyway. Also I'm running my own domain (web and e-mail). Getting your own domain on a hosted e-mail provider is a tough route. Especially getting this at a decent price level.

Now about your Blackberry example. 10 euro/month still adds up to 120 euro per year. First of all this is too much. For ActiveSync functionality I would be willing to pay (one time) 50 euro/user max. provided that I can use this functionality for the coming 4-5 years.
Suppose I would use ActiveSync for 3 years that would come down to about 1,5 euro/month. Quite different from 10 euro/month. Also in a subscription scheme, the moment I stop paying, I loose the right to use the software. Not something I'm looking for.

I've searched for hosted Scalix solutions in the past. This was difficult since first I run my own domain and secondly I could not find one located in The Netherlands. However, this would not allow me to shut down my server so in my case this would result in additional costs. Regarding pricepoint; to me this would certainly top out at 5-10 euro per month/user.

I did a quick search for something like Microsoft Small Business Server 2008. The standard edition was offered for 345 euro excl. tax. Even though I'm not a Microsoft fan, for a complete server this is a very good price. And it includes Exchange and ActiveSync...

There is one important factor I think you should realize. People are scared by subscription scheme's. With the current economic climate even businesses are hesitant to commit to long term contracts. I know that I just did this for the iPhone but here in Holland we have no choice (maybe Nely Smit-Kroes in Brussels should have done something about this...).
Therefore I strongly believe that one could actually make a solid business case selling ActiveSync separately and for a one-time fee. And looking at all those nice app's that setup a webshop within minutes it should not be too hard a thing for you guys to accomplish...


Best regards,

Olger

[Deezt]

Florian great post.

I tried to push hard to get our server collocated at a datacenter with the company Hetzner but in the end we didn't... yet. Then again I also was pushing for a MS SBS or Google Apps for us over Scalix, but I guess luckily for some here my advice was not heeded . As an IT worker I think Scalix must strive to explain why someone should choose them over Exchange. As Exchange is the standard at most organizations and there are countless books and consultants. The scalix book was alright but heh 1 versus 1,000+ is a big difference.

I also encountered great problems searching for hosted scalix solutions, the only firm I saw mentioned was then posting else where that it was no longer offering scalix and bad mouthing it. As an aside, I think some of the documentation and information on the webpage should be cleaned up a bit. There is all kinds of great new information but you must sift through old, obsolete and unhelpful information. Wiki's and messageboards are great but if they have old information not so much.

As of this morning I spent 3 hours working through smartcache issues with a user, they have some emails with jpegs that were embedded which no longer display and the list goes on and on. If I was running exchange I would have somewhere to turn but for now I am on my own. Our choice to go with caused me countless nights without sleep as users had problems during the migration. I asked very nicely for us to get an expert to help but my boss said well you need to know what exactly to ask so I pushed onward.

In the end when I had a sabbatical to finish my studies in my home country I went to a doctor and he diagnosed me with a bleeding ulcer. Scalix was without a doubt the trigger in my mind, but not because of the product itself just because I pride myself on trying to improve people’s work, and when employees tell me things were better with our older solution (Open-xchange) I felt pretty defeated. Of course most of these are personal issues the point is just that decisions that were made have cost me in more ways than one.

I know for sure many people curse their exchange servers, so the grass is always greener, but I personally am still trying to find the silver lining in choosing Scalix over Exchange. Oh and as I am typing this up I just got a call from a senior manager at a customer’s office saying all of his appointments past, present and future are gone. Maybe today is just not my day. That or I will just tell my bosses I don’t care where the money is or isn’t you get this setup by a professional or I am out. Email is too important to cowboy around with and scrap together a solution

Olger you are an enthusiast no doubt but we really are paying a good chunk of money to license and use Scalix. Nothing against you but I know many people who run a home webserver on a consumer internet connection and I think they are all a bit daft. The costs of a shared server or a dedicated box in a secure well maintained data center are so cheap that it only makes sense to me to run development/test pages to play with. But when someone is running a business or anything of worth at home in such a setup I have to shake both my head and their heads. Bottom line you get what you give, or in this case what you don’t pay for. Think Florian covered your alternatives pretty well.

P.S. Canadian working in Germany, where SUSE rules and Redmond drools, hoping thoes fine Cannucks in Ottawa will eventually get on the ball more so.

[florian]

Well, I can't really talk to the issues you've seen, and probably each and every one of them would deserve specific attention. Generally, I accept the fact that some versions of our product, especially early 11.x releases, had quite serious quality issues and weren't up to some of our own high standards. We've changed QA processes in the meantime and given feedback I receive from various sides, I would dare saying that with the latest 11.4.x releases, we're really, really, really back on track. Everything that's left needs individual attention.

If you need us to look at specific things in your environment or if you're dissatisfied with the response you received in commercial support, please let me know ticket numbers or similar references and I'll see to look into it or escalate.

As to why people choose Scalix over Exchange?

- cost! Yes, you can safe a lot of money if you do it right.
- infrastructure! A lot of people are not running active directory and they don't want to. Scalix can run standalone or hook into any kind of LDAP, as well as Active Directory.
- clients of choice: On my Mac, I don't want to buy Office and use Entourage, I'm very happy with iWork, openoffice.org and Apple's built-in iCal calendar tool. Which doesn't talk to Exchange (future versions will). But which, using open standards like CalDAV, does talk to Scalix. I also prefer Firefox over IE (or, again on the Mac, don't even have it) and I don't want my webmail experience to degrade just because I'm not using Microsoft's browser, which is ridiculous.

All-in-all: Freedom of Choice on many sides - I still feel good about that part!

Makes sense? But then... I'm probably more of a Think Different guy anyway and don't believe that things are good just because tons of books have been written about 'em.

Sure - lots of work to be done, but I really don't want the world to end up in a full monopoly in such a relevant space. It's simply wrong. And we'll continue to work on preventing this from happening.

Florian

[criptus]

Thanks for this Florian.

I'd also support Freedom of Choice idea, which MS products does not.

I think OpenSource has shown, this is the right way of thinking...

[Deezt]

Yeah no I like the reasons you posted and following the masses is not always the best.

I am hoping to install the very latest scalix server as soon as feasible, but everyone here is already way impressed with the new outlook connector.

My problems have less to do with Scalix and more to do with my current situation (: but hoping to beta test this activesync connector

[charon]

Since I have been waiting for so long for a scalix active sync connector, i am thinking of developing one for my own purpose.

i think i'll use a zarafa z-push backen for sync.

the advantage would be the usage with the community edition, too.

would anyone else be interested?

i am not quite sure, how i cancover the dev costs.

maybe i could also release a SaaS Service, where users can sync their PIM data.