Support for funambol free as OSS pim/mail push server?

[mephisto]

Anybody seen this?
http://www.funambol.com/
I think this woud be a great addition to Scalix.

[florian]

Mephisto,

thanks for the pointer and yes, we were aware of the announcement; obviously, some pretty big changes happen in the wireless email market today and especially here in europe where standards-based handsets using SyncML technology are even more common than in the US we see some interest in the protocol and related technology.

We've launched our current Scalix wireless solution based on Notify's Notify Link product successfully mid last year, check out their website for latest developments (www.notifycorp.com). This solution already provides for multi-platform wireless support freeing you from the lock-in situation typically associated with particular products.

Our plans are to further enhance our wireless offerings throughout 2006 to meet and exceed market expectations. Some exciting times ahead. stay tuned. :-)

Florian.

[mephisto]

Florian,

I'm aware of the Notify solution. It's just that now there is another option which is:

a) free as in beer
b) free as in freedom of speech (i.e. released under the GPL)
c) working both on Linux and Windows based servers.

The connector API seems well documented and now that you released the evolution connector under a free licence I was wondering if you could create a comunity project that should create a scalix connector for funambol.

It seems Funambol started as sync4j but now they renamed the project because they now also offer email push functionality. They not only support SyncML compatible phones but also Microsoft Outlook, RIM Blackberry, Microsoft Windows Mobile (PocketPC), Palm and even Apple iPod.

Regards,

Mephisto

[florian]

Hi Mephisto,

thanks for your further comments; again, we're certainly looking at all major developments in mail, wireless and certainly open source space and that includes additional wireless products such as Funambol. Obviously, we've also noted the inclusion of wireless push email in their latest offering, V3.0 of the now-renamed product.

At a glance, this looks like great technology and given the history of the project, I wouldn't even surprised if it really is; however, to take any specific route and/or include support for other third party products under our Scalix Ready initiative or even with some of our own software components or as a community project, we'll have to check out the market acceptance and overall implications for the Scalix solution very carefully.

In any way, I believe we'll continue to deliver according to our principles in the widest possible client support ("Clients of Choice") and follow the concept of extending this into wireless space. I'm very sure we'll see some more aspects of that from Scalix over the course of the year.

Stay tuned,
Florian.

[sov]

I've contacted Notify Technology and heard from them that notifylink is not available for the Community edition of Scalix. I'm using Scalix Community edition just for home use. Since a short while I have a Pocket PC with Mobile 5.0 and I would really like to synchronize my email, contacts and calendar over the internet... How can I achieve that?

[florian]

Unfortunately, as of today, I believe you can't.

From our perspective, obviously we have to maintain some difference between our free Community Edition offering and our flagship product, Scalix Enterprise Edition. I beliee we made very diligent choices and as a result, Scalix Community Edition is the most feature-rich highly-integrated messaging solution on the market today. In our cooperation with Notify, both companies invested heavily to make the integration happen. As of today, Notify does not have any free offerings - the licensing and pricing model on their side is outside our control. So bottom line is that you would need to acquire a minimum Enterprise Edition license from us and the Notify Link for Scalix product from Notify.

You will be able to get wireless email, based on IMAP and other standard protocols, to work with your device and Scalix Community Edition. However, Calendar and Contact synchronisation over the air won't become available.

This might (and I personally believe it will!!!) change in the future when standards-based wireless synchronisation protocls such as Sync ML become more ubiquitous - howeven then I believe other devices (such as Symbian-based Mobile Phones) will probably have some edge above the Windows Mobile product as the vendor providing the OS for these devices is usually pursueing proprietary technologies first and only looking at open standards if general adoption becomes too high to be ignored. One might look for independent third party solutions, though.

Unfortunately, this is the current situation - hope this helps anyway.

Cheers,
Florian.

[axsom1]

Has anyone had any success configuring a funambol server with a scalix backend?

Regards,
John

[acqant]

Unfortunately, as of today, I believe you can't.

From our perspective, obviously we have to maintain some difference between our free Community Edition offering and our flagship product, Scalix Enterprise Edition. I beliee we made very diligent choices and as a result, Scalix Community Edition is the most feature-rich highly-integrated messaging solution on the market today. In our cooperation with Notify, both companies invested heavily to make the integration happen. As of today, Notify does not have any free offerings - the licensing and pricing model on their side is outside our control. So bottom line is that you would need to acquire a minimum Enterprise Edition license from us and the Notify Link for Scalix product from Notify.

You will be able to get wireless email, based on IMAP and other standard protocols, to work with your device and Scalix Community Edition. However, Calendar and Contact synchronisation over the air won't become available.

This might (and I personally believe it will!!!) change in the future when standards-based wireless synchronisation protocls such as Sync ML become more ubiquitous - howeven then I believe other devices (such as Symbian-based Mobile Phones) will probably have some edge above the Windows Mobile product as the vendor providing the OS for these devices is usually pursueing proprietary technologies first and only looking at open standards if general adoption becomes too high to be ignored. One might look for independent third party solutions, though.

Unfortunately, this is the current situation - hope this helps anyway.

Cheers,
Florian.

HUH? I have v9 community edition and Notify link working. Has something changed in v10?

You need an enterprise class user which community has.

[Hal Steger]

Just a point of clarification regarding the licensing and related use of the Scalix Wireless Solution (aka NotifyLink), which changed with Scalix 10.

Prior to v10, the Scalix Wireless Solution could, by license, be used with CE (specifically by premium users, then called enterprise users).

Starting with v10 (in February, 2006), the licensing changed to allow the Scalix Wireless Solution to only be used with Enterprise Edition (EE, specifically by premium users), and later with Small Business Edition (SBE, introduced in April, 2006). The functional differences between CE and EE/SBE (which is the means upon which the CE license agreement is based) are mentioned in the Scalix 10 release notes as well as on our web site at http://www.scalix.com/products/compareeditions.html.

This change was part of an effort to ensure that there is sufficent advanced functionality in EE/SBE and at the time, there were not many CE sites using the wireless solution (so it would not have affected many sites -- for those that it did, please see below). As an aside, Scalix remains commited to making sure that CE is a great free email system, but we do also need to ensure that there is sufficent advanced functionality in EE/SBE.

For any CE site that was using the Scalix Wireless Solution prior to v10 (as indicated by their purchase date), they are welcome to continue using it with CE. Others need to use the Scalix Wireless Solution only with EE or SBE. For these sites, a major reason why Scalix introduced SBE was to provide a highly affordable offering. Although not free, SBE represents up to a 70% cost savings for small businesses vs. EE, which is a great value.

Finally, please note that CE sites can continue to access email wirelessly via any number of IMAP-based wireless solutions.

Hal Steger
Scalix

[Hal Steger]

Please use this link instead to view the Compare Editions page:
http://www.scalix.com/products/compareeditions.html

The prior link had a period at the end which broke it.

Hal Steger