Is Scalix right for us?

[winux]

Ok. We have an off-site hosting solution for our company website and email. The hosting is great, and no problem with it what-so-ever.

However, there are a couple of things we want to achieve with email.

1. Using Outlook with POP3 pulls the email from the server to the local computer. Yes, we can opt to keep the mail on the server, but we are limited on space of course, thus we have to delete it every so often. The main problem is that more than once a computer went down and all their email goes with it. Luckily we have backups to re-import the mail after a re-build, but we all know how how Outlook can be quarky. I know with Exchange 5.5 email would be stored on the mail server, not locally. Is the same for Scalix?

2. Webmail access is a must. I see Scalix does this, so no problem there.

3. In case that a users computer does go down, we have other computers they can use in the meantime. Would Scalix allow them to logon to the local domain from any computer and pull up their email--per above case number 1?

4. Scalix has group calendars, which we lack and would probably utilize.

So, would Scalix rid us the headache of lost or corrupt email when a computer goes down?

Also, if anyone knows of any good tutorials on how to move only the email from the off-site location to our in-house location, please help. I know it has something to do with modifying the MX Entries, but do we point the MX entry to go to our in-house IP address?

Thanks in advance.

[florian]

Winux (thinking what you want to tell us with that name...) is it Win2nux? :-)

well, looking at your questions:

1. In Scalix, all email is stored on the server per default; in that sense, it operates very similar to exchange. Keeping email on the server simplifies things such as roaming users, web access and backup and restore. we have a very scaleable message store on the server, so stability and size are not an issue.

2. well, actually we won several awards with our Scalix Web Access product; it has just recently been on the cover of InfoWorld magazine, featured in an article about AJAX technology. Actually, Scalix did AJAX years before the term was branded. :-)

3. as email is stored on the server, access in only and users can read their email from everywhere. they might need to create a new outlook profile unless their windows profile is also fully roaming.

4. we do have group calendaring based on free busy, shared delegate access and public folders. so it's there.

To help you with your migration/mail routing setup, i believe we would need to understand a bit more about your environment. please work with scalix sales to get help if needed.

cheers,
Florian.

[winux]

Thanks for the info.

Are there any hardware preferences for Scalix--like processor type, configurations, etc? I know of the min requirements, but dunno if there is a hardware set that it works best with?

After a little more research, I figured that since we own multiple domains, we can just pull one that is parked off-site and configure a Scalix server here for that. It would be easier that modifying individual MX entries, etc, and running into DNS issues.

Scalix is perfect for us, and since they upgraded from 5 to 25, it helps us even more (we would have needed only 8 licenses, and cost for 25 would not have been in our range).

We're just a growing business, and we recently implemented an Asterisk server for our phone system. We love the Linux world. It saves us little people money. Why should I pay for Exchange and Windows Server licenses, or other phone system licenses (like Nortel) in packs of five if we hire just one more employee? Doesn't make sense for us little guys out there.

As far as 'winux'--I'm a Windows and Linux user, but love Linux. Also use the Mac, but not too fond of it.

[florian]

Well, different opinion on the last item; I am writing this on a Apple Powerbook, and for my mobile needs, I would not easily trade this for anything. It just works! :-)

For hardware sizing/information, i don't think you have to think much for your number of users. single cpu and 512 ram will easily be enough, as will be simple IDE hard drives; would suggest mirroring by either hard- or software though to protect against single disk failures.

have fun,
Florian.

[R1200GS]

Also, if anyone knows of any good tutorials on how to move only the email from the off-site location to our in-house location, please help. I know it has something to do with modifying the MX Entries, but do we point the MX entry to go to our in-house IP address?

I have a specific process to do this but cannot publicly post. Would you like to discuss??