Zimbra vs. Scalix

[phoenix]

Originally Posted by anagama

As a lawyer, I'm the one ultimately held responsible for breaches. Not my staff, not my host. It's simply impossible for me to feel comfortable with a hosted solution.

If it's really that important to you then surely the features of the Network Edition are worth the money - surely you need to be able to backup this sort of information? Don't forget there is more to the NE version than just the Outlook Connector.

[fselendic]

We are also in the middle of Zimbra vs Scalix decision. And, yes, Outlook connectors are killing you. You have a tough fight there guys, fighting MS, Lotus/Domino, Scalix, AND trying to change a paradigm, all battles fought at once.

Option for buying Outlook connector, or scaling down 25 pack requirement, would greatly expand your users base in SMB and emerging markets.

You do have a very nice product, and are changing some paradigms. But are a latecomer. The most of the market where future will be defined is in BRIC and other emerging markets, which have a great amount of SMBs not defined as in US (1000 employees) but small, sub 20 people companies.

We are OS systems integrator, in Europe, and, yep, it is pain in the ass starting building a user base from bottom up, when licensing terms are like this. Also, on a side note, LOTS of people here with Outlook2000.

So if you aren't just focused on already pretty much taken US market, and really want to spread as much as possible, please reconsider and help us to distribute you as much as possible here where people still don't have any collaboration solutions.

A bit off topic, but somewhat connected to business model decisions. See what another latecomer and paradigm changer and really exciting new company has done here in Europe (mostly to strengthen its position in EU government market). Alfresco (also VC funded). They moved to GPL. Compiere too.

I'm not implying anything. Just asking you to keep open mind about business model. There WILL be a trend of reverting licenses (already started). There are just too many licenses in OS world.

All of this is just a question of finding a right balance between paying customers and spreading into emerging areas like wildfire.

Europe and BRIC are places where paradigm shift will be done. Europe will have 4% of its GDP in OS IT companies by 2010.

A new breed of companies will emerge soon (actually, already started), people that will integrate all of this nice OS software into coherent products, and recommend and install them to customers. Don't make those people life difficult, help us spread you as much as possible. No one sane thinks you should work for free, or the software should be free as in beer. Just leave us a more maneuvering space when pushing you here, where market isn't yet defined (collaboration is used in something like 14% of companies here ) We WILL pay you back, eventually. Keep in mind that most of the proprietary software is used here for free, and if not, one can get IBMs collaboration products for laughable price.

This was not ment to be a rant, just pointing out perspective from a player on different market.

Regards,
Filip Šelendić
Protenus CEO

[jholder]

Filip,
Thank you for your thoughts. Our minds are always open. We appreciate your opinion.

yes, Outlook connectors are killing you.

If you knew what I knew. . . . . .I'm not sure you would have even posted this. We are far away from dead. As far away as you can get.

Perhaps we are a late comer. . .but so are OS X, YouTube, Digg, and so on.
In a world where the paradigm changes daily, we have a big foothold.

People are willing to pay, if your product is better than everyone elses'.
Our goal isn't just to get any users we can get (although we'll certainly take them); our goal is to get the users who understand why other email systems are stuck in 1996, and why we're better.

Because of that, I think we have the very best user base around.

OpenXchange recently made a big deal of a deal they cut. They got all their PR people on it, etc. There just isn't a comparison.

Even against Scalix. It's like Mac vs. PC. You can try to compare, because they both are computers, and they both perform tasks. But they are not the same. One is far better(IMHO). Same with us.

Always remember that just because we are silent, doesn't mean we are dormant.

We are far far from it. We will be introing some stuff (here soon) that will blow your mind. Stick around. You're gonna like what you see.

-john

[fselendic]

Originally Posted by jholder

Filip,
Thank you for your thoughts. Our minds are always open. We appreciate your opinion.


If you knew what I knew. . . . . .I'm not sure you would have even posted this. We are far away from dead. As far away as you can get.

Perhaps we are a late comer. . .but so are OS X, YouTube, Digg, and so on.
In a world where the paradigm changes daily, we have a big foothold.

People are willing to pay, if your product is better than everyone elses'.
Our goal isn't just to get any users we can get (although we'll certainly take them); our goal is to get the users who understand why other email systems are stuck in 1996, and why we're better.

Because of that, I think we have the very best user base around.

OpenXchange recently made a big deal of a deal they cut. They got all their PR people on it, etc. There just isn't a comparison.

Even against Scalix. It's like Mac vs. PC. You can try to compare, because they both are computers, and they both perform tasks. But they are not the same. One is far better(IMHO). Same with us.

Always remember that just because we are silent, doesn't mean we are dormant.

We are far far from it. We will be introing some stuff (here soon) that will blow your mind. Stick around. You're gonna like what you see.

-john

Sorry John, wasn't clear enough. Not a native English speaker, you know. I'm sure that you are making a lots of money even now. And I do agree with your Mac vs PC comparison. We ALL know which one is better. But, we all know which one has and will always have much bigger profits, and much bigger chunk of the market.

Zimbra its all yours, I can live with your goals, quite elitistic approach, you DO have some stuff not available anywhere else, and will probably intro even more, and there ARE people willing to pay for that. Thats great.

What I wanted to point out is that, with a product like yours, you are maybe targeting too narrow. There is MUCH MORE people needing collaboration, willing to pay, but not willing to pay that much.

See, I have to sell stuff like yours for a living. I'm in OS world for, weeeell, 12-13 years. The battle goes this way: wtf is this, we never heard of it. Who will give us support? Where are certifications (you wouldn't believe how many IT managers ask for those). Why wouldn't we just buy IBM, MS? You know, noone fired for buying IMB. Lots of IBM partners and resellers and salesforce and marketing fluff. Same for MS, Oracle etc. 9 of 10 damn IT managers don't give a fck for a feature or two or three; they are covering their asses, going to sponsored sales events, and are taking, oh well, everyone has MS/IBM, no risk in buying those attitude. It's not like Joe average that will be using that product in their company will ever know that he/she could be ten times more productive with something else. They just use what upper management says.

I've been fighting to change paradigm for A LOOOONG time (maybe, a bit too long ). Not really easy, less than 1/50 success ratio.

So, do I believe that you are successful? Yep. Innovative? Yep. Will you shake a market a bit? Yep. Make a good money out of it all? Yep.

But, you Mac comment was great. You'll stay Mac of Groupware world. See, that 86 % not yet using groupware? You do have a product that could fill that to at least 50% amount. That's what I believe. With just a few tiny changes in licensing.

Being a Mac isn't bad at all, I'm just a bit sad that I cannot sell you more under this particular terms on this particular market.

Btw, neither Mac or YouTube were latecomers. Mac was screwed by Bill, with 10 times worst software, but more affordable and easily distributable. And we all know what that ment for Mac. Niche, for a long 10 years, till OSX. Which is still a niche.

Sorry guys, didn't mean to offend you, I know you are doing well (or even great), just wanted to point out some ways in which you could be killing all of the others (better use of "killing" in this sentence )

Sure I'll be around, I am around from the first second you appeared on net. Part of my job, to track promising OS companies. Looking forward to see what you have up your sleeves. Just keep in mind that a tiny change in some of your licensing terms can help guys like me all around the world to push you much further than you ever imagined

Regards,
Filip Šelendić
Protenus CEO

[phoenix]

Thanks for your posts. We constantly have the licensing structure under review, the best thing I can suggest is to send your comments to our sales guys. They're the ones that will have the most influence in what changes might be made to the licensing structure and I'm sure they'd be interested to hear your views. If you feel like contacting them then they're at sales@zimbra.com (surprise ).

[mcevoys]

Frankly, I tried to interface with Zimbra sales on this issue, and found the experience...err...not encouraging.

Despite having converted a couple of other firms to Zimbra, my requirements were for a personal server, 12 users or so. Three of those would like to be able to sync their Palm.

In order to do this with Zimbra , looks like NE is the only way.

Multiple back-and-forth emails with sales illustrated pretty quickly that they just don't 'get it'.

I was offered (not enough to be worth discussing%) off list pricing, which after paying RedHat, puts me at well over $150 per user, never mind the residual costs in subsequent years.

I can stand up an Exchange server for less.

I'd like very much to be able to financially support Zimbra with this smaller install, but unfortunately, I just can't find a way to have it make any sense.

This thread has me considering whether I should swap my personal server over to Scalix before I get too deep into group scheduling (that I'd have to migrate manually). Of course this would likely have future implications on what technologies I recommend to my clients and others. I should add that my day job at (insert very large network company here) has me in front of IT leaders of Fortune 50 companies every week.

I can't be the only one in this position.

[fselendic]

Originally Posted by mcevoys

Frankly, I tried to interface with Zimbra sales on this issue, and found the experience...err...not encouraging.

Despite having converted a couple of other firms to Zimbra, my requirements were for a personal server, 12 users or so. Three of those would like to be able to sync their Palm.

In order to do this with Zimbra , looks like NE is the only way.

Multiple back-and-forth emails with sales illustrated pretty quickly that they just don't 'get it'.

I was offered (not enough to be worth discussing%) off list pricing, which after paying RedHat, puts me at well over $150 per user, never mind the residual costs in subsequent years.

I can stand up an Exchange server for less.

I'd like very much to be able to financially support Zimbra with this smaller install, but unfortunately, I just can't find a way to have it make any sense.

This thread has me considering whether I should swap my personal server over to Scalix before I get too deep into group scheduling (that I'd have to migrate manually). Of course this would likely have future implications on what technologies I recommend to my clients and others.

I can't be the only one in this position.

I hope I didn't start a flame war here I really like Zimbra and direction which it is taking.

However, yep, when bundling best of breed OS software, of which a lot has Exibit B, "badgeware" license, and annual fees, one finds itself in position that costs are going through the roof. Exchange argument is actually true, and Lotus/Domino/Workplace (whatever it is called nowdays) are even much much cheaper!

I'm sure that nice guys here answering our pleads are NOT from sales department Sales must think everything is great, after all 6mil*25(average)$ is a LOT per year.

But, then you get to this two scenarios, not really well covered, mcevoys, that is trying to beef up his infrastructure alone, and me, whose job is to persuade guys like mcevoys (only not so technically versed) to beef up their infrastructure with something as nice as Zimbra. Zimbra being sort of latecomer, we have to start bottom up (from smaller companies to bigger), just to have some footprint in country before we attack big guys. And here a problem starts. Scalix just has a better SMB offer. 25 Premium accounts with unlimited basic accounts for free.

Now, Zimbra being more innovative and more 21st century like, you don't have to match Scalix scheme. You can go with, I don't know, 5 or 10 Premium (Network) + unlimited basic (which you already have).

That would cover companies up to maybe 100 users here. 10 People needing Outlook integration, and others working with web client. Yep, you wouldn't make any money on those, but you aren't making any money on those anyhow. They are using Exchange, Domino, OpenExchange, Scalix or most of them, simply nothing.

But, that would give people like me some foothold. I can say to the big guys, look, I have 10-15 installations. Look at this features. Look how great it works. People would start noticing Zimbra much faster.

I've never heard of any OS company being hurt by big market presence. Quite the opposite, indications are that market presence and share are a key driver in further adoption where it counts (big, conservative entities loaded with money, like banks, insurance companies, government) and more important, huge driver in negotiating a price of buyout (which is your VC exit strategy, after all). JBoss was sold for 28 times its yearly revenue (sold for cca 450mil $), and MySql is around 1bil$ worth, with similar yearly revenue as JBoss.

For Christ's sake, Scalix and Sugar were into top 10 IT innovators list. Beats me why. They innovated absolutely nothing (except Sugar screwed us all with Exibit B clause in MPL). The only thing I can think of why Scalix is there and you aren't is their bigger market share and awareness. And you are again opening a new route with offline work in Firefox3.0 with it's embedded database!

So, help us help you


Btw, can I send this to your sales guys? Or they'll politely send me to hell?

Regards,
Filip Šelendić
Protenus d.o.o.
CEO

[keffa]

I am currently facing both sides of the coin so to speak.

I am the IT manager for a reasonably large organization and I am currently assessing Zimbra and Scalix for deployment to power their email needs and to replace the antiquated Lotus solution.

My problems are many. The first major issue is that the retail units still use Windows NT with IE6 (And unfortunately it happens to be the version that suffers from the AJAX cache issue that results in slow performance as Microsoft have not released any further updates for the platform). I'm currently looking to migrate the platform to Firefox to work around this.

The second issue is that my budget is not quite as big as I would like it to be, but we all live by the beancounters whims and wishes and therefore I must make do.

I have been running the tests with three main focus groups of our users, representing different types of users and different roles.

The Scalix testing came first. The AJAX client does look for all the world like a desktop application and very nice too but what advantage does this have over Zimbra's interface other than it being an Outlook clone? And what advantage is that exactly? I don't want to emulate a piece of software that is tied to a desktop, I want to move my users on because in many cases most of the staff will have never used Outlook and why would I want to keep it around?

It's interesting to note that in the retail positions where staff turnover is high and the average age member of staff is between 17 and 23, the people who took part in the focus groups took to the Zimbra interface like a duck to water and when asked, preferred to use Zimbra to Scalix. Why? Because most had never used Outlook before and had no preconceptions! Furthermore a few stated that it was like using Hotmail/Yahoo which they knew! Way of the future??

Furthermore, Scalix makes use of pop ups and it's AJAX client will actually crash out anyone using the version of IE6 that is affected by the AJAX issue forcing a reboot. Zimbra not only provides a fully up to date AJAX client but an alternative for those unable to use it.

While on the subject of the web client, Zimbra's is far more feature rich than Scalix. It offers many features that Scalix doesn't, including the new "Documents" feature and therefore is much more of a collaboration suite. Furthermore I cannot for the life of me understand how Scalix's client can be called faster in any way, I've been using both for a while and I am certain that Zimbra loads a mailbox with 2500 messages in it a heck of a lot quicker than Scalix does.

Of course, Zimbra is not without it's problems. It's method of sharing calenders and documents via the invite system just doesn't work properly with distribution lists and you can't yet share mail folders but considering these problems will be fixed and the upcoming features (Push IMAP and chat has me excited) to be added its development seems a lot more exciting and dynamic and hence it will probably have more to offer in the long run.

Last but not least, what matters most. Total Cost of Ownership and reliability. It's quite likely that I will purchase the network edition if the beancounters let me but it's nice to know I won't have to shell out extra for an anti virus/spam solution. It's even nicer to know that if I didn't want to I wouldn't have to purchase the network edition if I didn't want to because the open source edition has everything and more I need. And apart from a small issue with tags which I have raised a bug report about and a dodgy install which wasn't the fault of Zimbra, it has been running solid and well for some time now with no problems.

As you can no doubt guess from the tone of my post, Zimbra has virtually won if the focus group trials could be considered a competition.

I did say I was facing both sides of the coin didn't I? And that's true because I am also looking for a solution for a smaller family company who has 5 employees (I don't work for them). Yet despite the fact that Scalix has a free 25 power user license, I still favour Zimbra. For exactly the same reasons as I am going to be using Zimbra for the larger organization. And ultimately in response to the original poster...Zimbra has a free UNLIMITED power user license given that you can freely download the open source edition. Why face two different software costs when the one will suffice and just scrap Outlook?

[phoenix]

Originally Posted by fselendic

Btw, can I send this to your sales guys? Or they'll politely send me to hell?

You can certainly send it to them (send them a link to the thread, if you like), what they'll say is up to them.

There's no 'flame war' here, it's just a discussion about direction. Obviously we can't please all the people all the time but my personal opinion is we have to try to get a many on-board as we can.

I don't have any influence on company policy, that's the job of management and they'll ultimately do what they think is best for the company and it's customers. It is a very difficult tightrope to walk.

[fselendic]

Nice summary. We are also leaning towards Zimbra, mostly for the same reasons, but I wouldn't be bothering guys here if everything was nice and rosy, would I?

We tested both, and came to similar conclusions. Although, we do use the same AV, spam filter stack as Zimbra in front of our Exchange server, so it would be quite trivial to do the similar stuff for Scalix.

Now, the problems arise in mixed environment (btw. great catch with younger population, we too find them much less brainwashed with MS way of doing things, and much more opened to Zimbra approach). I have a sales opportunity in tens of government agencies, which are mostly using Outlook for 5-10 users. Also in some banks. Mixed environments are pure hell, as you probably know

And here the problem starts. Those people would use Zimbra, even pay for it, but that entry level license is too high for them, because 5 out of 100 people are using MS Outlook, and, usually, they are decision makers. And stubborn as hell.

I just managed to find one power sponsor in one organization who is willing to consider making people using MS Outlook to go full Zimbra way.

I wasn't implying that Scalix is a better product, just that they have entry level scheme maybe a better thought out. So one can come to some organization, start things without this "don't use Outlook at all" argument, and make a progress.

Zimbra basic with 10 or even 5 free Network accounts would be a true blessing. Easier entry, easy showing off on Network capabilities, easier showing of of Zimbra capabilities.

Zimbra was first with OS move, Scalix came second (and even didn't opened all of their stuff yet), but has put that nice touch with entry level stuff. Maybe it is time for Zimbra to answer, now that they aren't the only game in town (other OS products are subpar to both).