Scalix iPhone Client

Discuss the Scalix Mobile Web Client

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JasonBergenske
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Postby JasonBergenske » Tue Sep 23, 2008 10:07 pm

again... we should have to pay additional to the thousands we have given scalix...

kanderson

Postby kanderson » Wed Sep 24, 2008 12:37 am

You can use them, Email works fine. Contacts and Calendar will come shortly, just hold on.

For now, you can export the contacts to a PST, load them into a profile that's just garbage, and sync that back to the iPhone. Then the contacts are on the phone.

EVERYONE wants ActiveSync. It'll be here shortly. Look at Florian's signature. It'll be out soon. Changing a mail system will obviously take longer than waiting for Scalix to release ActiveSync. Plus it'll be more expensive. And riskier.

Kev.

florian
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Postby florian » Wed Sep 24, 2008 12:15 pm

I know it's a bit of unfair comment right here and now, but it's all working fine on my iPhone.... I'm obviously a user of our own internal beta deployment. :-) Stay tuned, we're polishing off a couple of rough edges and it's delayed against it's original schedules by quite a bit, but we'll eventually get it out sometime not too far in the future.

As for cost - you will be able to run this right on your Scalix server, so no extra machine required (although the first public beta will need one), it will be a one-time fee per-user and the one-time fee will be less than what you pay for the phone's plan in a single month. So for, say, 20 iPhones, we're talking couple hundred and certainly not 1000s. :-) [If you need exact pricing information, those are already available from our regional sales teams as the pricing and currency depends a bit on the region you're in!]

Florian.
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JasonBergenske
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Postby JasonBergenske » Mon Sep 29, 2008 8:55 pm

will you need the newest version of scalix on our server??? if so, how hard is it to upgrade...

kanderson

Postby kanderson » Mon Sep 29, 2008 9:20 pm

You'll need at least 11.4.1, and you'll want 11.4.2 when it's out.

Upgrading is REALLY easy, if you followed the common advice on here and used either CentOS, RHEL, or SLES. Simple upgrade, likely less than 10 minutes.

If you opted for openSuse, or Fedora, then we'll need more information about which versions and stuff you're upgrading from. Should be straightforward to do, you'll likely need to change OSes, and when you do, you should choose Cent, RHEL, or SLES. Moderate Difficulty, Maybe 30 mins of downtime, you'll want a second server temporarily, some administrative prep time.

If you've gone with Gentoo, *buntu or Debian, have fun. You're on your own.

Kev.

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So....

Postby experien » Sat Oct 25, 2008 12:29 am

The options as of today are:

1) install a third party architecture with cost greater than Scalix itself,

2) uninstall scalix, bit the bullet and install Zimbra

3) wait for scalix to release the majical activesync solution


I really hope its choice 3 and soon. While I don't mind, try explaining to a mob of angry iPhone users that they can't use their shiny new toy with an otherwise excellent mail system....

florian
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Postby florian » Sat Oct 25, 2008 2:04 am

I may want to add that (2) is actually another way of saying (1) because over a 3-5 year period, this will cost you more than Scalix because of the non-perpetual license.

I'm sorry - and somewhat personally frustrated - with the unfortunate delay in the release of ActiveSync for Scalix, however please trust me that we really want to ship the best possible product for a demanding crop of mobile users and unfortunately this has taken a bit longer than we expected, for various reasons.

As I said before, if it helps any, I am using it internally as my primary email solution on iPhone and it works really well (most of the time. :-()

Cheers, stay tuned,
Florian
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JasonBergenske
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Postby JasonBergenske » Sat Oct 25, 2008 9:54 pm

I assume Scalix will take this down... but as i am in a community form for members that are looking for answers and solutions... We have switched to Exchange Server, and it is easier by far to setup than scalix. Once setup everything works beautifully. No sporatic freezing, no service problems, i phone works out of the box, and not to mention EVERY FEATURE in ourlook works... It is amazing when you use the product that was actually made for something that everyone else is steeling the ideas from...

Cost wise, it is cheaper over the long term for sure... We purchased Server 2008 Small Business, which includes everything to setup exchange server... it took us about 2 hours to do everything, and it will support up to 75 users with no restrictions... and it cost less than $1000.00

Scalix i wish you the best, but i do assume that Microsoft will always be several steps ahead of you. Good try, although i do believe it was a complete and utter failure.

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Postby florian » Sun Oct 26, 2008 3:33 am

Hi Jason,

first of all, thanks for your posting. Just for the record, since I've ben involved with these forums, outside obvious spam, I've taken a single post down and that was not because somebody had endorsed a competing product, but rather had thrown pretty bad insults at my colleagues trying to help him as well as other forum members. After all, this is our place, everyone is welcome as a guest and the only thing I'd expect is that people treat each other with mutual respect.

second, you'll probably find a number of quotes with me saying the same thing - Microsoft Exchange is a fine product, at least in it's last generations; early versions, 5.5 and even 2000 were really not that stable, had tons of issue and typically created a big mess. That's certainly no longer true for 2003 or 2007. And I'm pretty sure that when setting up a new system, people running Exchange will be more happy than with a good number of products out in the market, possibly including our own in a couple cases. Which is fine.

I'd, however, like to add that there are a couple of differences where people may prefer not to go down that route.

On the pricing side, Scalix and SBS compete head to head up to 75 users - List prices can be found at http://www.microsoft.com/sbs/en/us/pricing.aspx and depending on how you look at it, Scalix pricing over a 3 year period will save you 0-50% on total software cost. Over a longer period Scalix will win because Microsoft doesn't offer upgrades to future SBS version, so whenever 2011 or 2012 hits, you'll have to buy a new one and most likely new hardware with it. Also, if you need more than those 75, this is a hard stop and you have to go for all the enterprise stuff, which will be way more expensive. Therefore, your mileage will vary, depending on what user number range you're in and we've done the math a number of times, typically ending up in total software cost savings of anywhere between 30 and 70% for Scalix. If one product is right for you, then that's probably not the end of the world in all cases, but it's what we see.

Things get more dramatic, btw., if you have to classes of users. Production companies, for example, quite often would love to get their manufacturing workforce on email, just for internal communication. A full mailbox CAL license, however, is too expensive for them. This is where Scalix' Premium vs. Standard user model comes in - you get the more functional Premium user licenses for your knowledge workers and everyone else can get on the same system and actually for free in most cases.

What's more important is probably the question what environment you live in. If yours is a straightforward Microsoft shop and set to remain that way, there is little immediate reason not to subscribe to a single vendor in full, however if this is not the case - as is in many IT environments - you may want to give this second thought. Some examples:

- Say you're happily running your Novell e-Directory to manage your users and other things and say your Novell Netware (or Netware Services on Linux) work well for you and you don't want to change them. Now you're introducing a new mail system and you're looking at Exchange. Well, as everyone knows, Exchange requires Active Directory, no choice. So to run Exchange you end up having to setup ADS, and it's now sitting next to your eDirectory, with lots of manual synchronisation and administration work. To stop this from happening, all you can do is to fully replace your well-running eDirectory with ADS and your Novell servers with Windows servers, just to regain a single directory structure. Technically there is no reason for that, a mail server should be independent of a particular directory are there are sufficiently powerful open standards (say: LDAP) out there to allow for this. Practically, that's the case with some products, but not with others (Groupwise and Exchange in this case) and it's this kind of lock-in I personally don't believe in.

- Client-side 1: Surely, as a shop running Exchange, your Outlook users will be all-happy as this integration is really what both parts are made for. And that's the point. Microsoft is using Exchange and it's market share at this point to keep people from considering alternatives on the desktop. One example is Rich Internet Applications. While Scalix has customers who run Scalix Web Access exclusively as their primary client environments, you probably couldn't do the same thing. That's because if you look carefully at the functionality offered within OWA, you won't find things such as delegate access or full public folder modes - the reason, again, is very clear. OWA is not designed to be a primary email client, which Scalix Web Access is. In the Exchange world, one uses Outlook for primary desktop access exclusively, and OWA is meant for use in those cases when you're travelling and you want portal-type access to your mailbox. Not saying one is better, one is worse, just two very different product philosophies, some may like one, some may prefer the other. Talking about web access, even on Windows I do prefer Firefox over Internet Explorer, for a couple reasons; if I want to use OWA in full-featured mode, I no longer have the choice, will have to use IE while I'm using that app or will have to go with a much-downgraded user experience. I may want to add that Scalix is working on adding Safari/Chrome/Webkit support for SWA in Scalix 11.5.

- Client-side 2: Alternative Desktop clients. I know many companies these days that are looking at desktop alternatives for cost reasons. One particular hotbed are office applications. Open Office on Windows and Linux and now also on the Mac has reached a maturity level where it has become a true alternative for any commercial office application. It does not, however, include a counterpart to Outlook. Now that leaves you in a difficult situation if you're using Exchange. Either you have to license Outlook separately, which is almost as expensive as buying the whole of office, or you basically can't go Open Office. With Scalix in this situation you would have the choice of possibly running SWA as a primary client, or you could start using a Thunderbird/Lightning combination for eMail and calendaring (which is actually what the Open Office people are favoring) or else. You'd simply have the choice. If you consider running Linux-based desktops as a full alternative, you'd even have Evolution or Kontact to choose from, both connecting to Scalix either via open standards or via open-source based and freely available connectors.

- Being a Mac user, the next such thing happens - I am actually perfectly happy with Apple's built-in Mail and Calendaring applications, Mail and iCal. I'm also happy with Apple's iWork office suite, which goes for less than $100 per seat in singles. I am using Mail and iCal using open standards - IMAP and CalDAV - to talk to my Scalix server every day, happily. If we were using Exchange, my only true choice on the Mac would be to purchase the full version of Microsoft's office suite on the Mac at a $400 list price. This contains a client called 'Entourage' that works with Exchange. It's not as fully-functional as Outlook and it works based on a proprietary interface, but it does the job. It's simply, however, not the client that I want to use because I really prefer Mail and iCal for their UI, even outside of cost.

I could possibly add many more such anecdotes, but I think the point I'm making here is clear. What Scalix and other alternatives are trying to do is NOT to "steal" ideas from Microsoft - and that's the only statement in your post I'm taking some personal objections on. Our aim is to provide an alternative, to enable and allow for Freedom of Choice in backend ecosystem as well as on the client side, to follow and utilize open standards for maximum and non-proprietary interoperability (something I very strongly believe in) and to create industry and customer benefit through all of this.

I actually also believe that because such alternatives exist today, e.g. Linux as an operating system, Open Office as a desktop application alternative and things like Scalix for backend server applications, Microsoft has been forced to look at their products and improve them. They are strong offerings and I'll be the last to start bashing them on what they are. I disagree with a philosophy of stickiness and lock-in, however, and I hope the above explains why.

On the 'being ahead' part, that's very true if we would follow in the same footsteps; of course we aren't and especially in a field as rich as software, there's never a single solution to the same problem. And while Exchange does some things really well, I'd think that there are things in our - email, calendaring and collaboration - space that one could do very differently ("Think Different" was Apple's motto in the 90s or so and we see where it's taken them; I'd personally much prefer to have Apple's 5-10% of market share (and mindshare? :-)) over Microsofts 80-90%). So I think we're on a different path and there is no such thing as ahead or behind in direct comparison. Stay tuned.

WIth this being said, I'll also wish you all the best, you've made you're choice, we've made ours and everyone is invited to make theirs.

Cheers,
Florian
Florian von Kurnatowski, Die Harder!

shr

waiting for active snc

Postby shr » Mon Oct 27, 2008 9:38 am

my company chose scalix over exchange in March because the Mobile over the air tool was promised for June. We consider switching to exchange because we anticipate scalix development will not deliver to promises in the future if they dont do it now...

florian
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Postby florian » Mon Oct 27, 2008 9:48 am

Well, I am not sure if that's really an adequate reaction. Things in software are never as straightforward as they sometimes seem and whenever you try to commit to a schedule, you can make mistakes.

Microsoft shipped Vista almost a year late, same for the latest version of Exchange, Apple postponed Leopard by 4 months or so. Given those numbers I think we still have some more time to burn to deserve such lack of trust, don't you think? In general, I'd dare saying that we've been pretty accurate with our release schedule over the last 18 months and we shipped quite a lot during that time....

I don't want to say I'm happy about the delay that we're looking at here, but those things happen, everywhere. ActiveSync and better mobile/wireless support are one of our top priorities and we'll follow the project through and ship when we're happy with what it's like; it's moved forward and still is. I won't give any more precise estimates given the history on this one, but you can certainly trust me that we're trying to get this out of the door as quickly as we can as it's obviously in our best interest with not only you waiting for the release.

Stay tuned and well,
Florian.
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sledgehammer89

Postby sledgehammer89 » Tue Oct 28, 2008 2:23 pm

florian wrote:As I said before, if it helps any, I am using it internally as my primary email solution on iPhone and it works really well (most of the time. :-()

Maybe it's time for a community based alpha version? ;-) I hope we get a free 3-5 user community release because my iPhone is private, I don't have money (then I use email and nothing else) and I don't want to wait if Zarafa fix their problems.

shr wrote:my company chose scalix over exchange in March because the Mobile over the air tool was promised for June.
Don't blame Scalix. Exchange is ready and released for months. And I don't recommend to be an early adopter for a company solution. With any product.

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Postby billb3 » Tue Oct 28, 2008 2:57 pm

sledgehammer89 wrote:Maybe it's time for a community based alpha version? ;-) I hope we get a free 3-5 user community release because my iPhone is private, I don't have money (then I use email and nothing else) and I don't want to wait if Zarafa fix their problems.

I would have to agree with this. From what I have been told, Beta 1 is a closed beta. My Sales guy told me we didn't qualify because we haven't been a client long enough. :( I think opening up the beta would be a nice gesture for all the users who have been waiting...and waiting.

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Postby florian » Tue Oct 28, 2008 6:25 pm

There will be a public beta, time-bombed, but otherwise not restricted in any way, hopefully stll this year.

We won't add any ActiveSync users to Community Edition because we can't - as most will know, unlike other vendors reverse-engineered implementations, ours is based on a license agreement with Microsoft and this doesn't allow us to give permanent versions away for free, so the minimum Scalix version this will require is the 20 user Small Business Edition.

Cheers,
Florian.
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sledgehammer89

Postby sledgehammer89 » Tue Oct 28, 2008 7:10 pm

Oh, thank you for the informations! I ever thought it's now an own protocol because developing is longer than expected.

Sad there will be no ActiveSync community edition for private use ... even if the community report bugs of the time bombed version? You can't rely on bug reports from 1000+ eyes and then bombed it out of sync? ;-)


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